


your body on my body in the dying winter light

by paperpenpal



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Bathing/Washing, During Timeskip (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Sharing a Bed, discovery and exploration, nursing back to health, sex progression fic, sexual healing, therapy head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:09:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27607450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperpenpal/pseuds/paperpenpal
Summary: But today- later tonight, Ingrid can have him and she plans to have all of him.  She has no illusions about the way he will soon leave her.  She does not pretend this to be anything more than it is, a stolen moment between them stretched on for weeks and weeks and weeks, so she will savor it all.She does not want him to leave.  She can think of little else she wants less.  Ingrid wants Sylvain to stay with her forever.  A childish wish.But she cannot ask him to.  Sylvain will do a great many things for her, she has learned, but only this winter. Afterward, he will return to playfully defying her. If they see each other again, they will likely return to their normalcy.  He will chase others.  She will watch him chase them.  She will scold him and save him and love him.And this winter will stay a secret between them.
Relationships: Ingrid Brandl Galatea/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 25
Kudos: 103





	your body on my body in the dying winter light

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Birthday to the both of you.
> 
> I'm not a smut writer and honestly, originally, despite the premise of the fic, I had planned on skipping a lot of it but then I realized that I couldn't - not for what I wanted to do, so I turned to my wonderful friend [Jul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Julx3tte) for help, without whom this fic would not be what it is! Thank you for the beta, friend!
> 
> That being said, I should warn you that while the fic and the topic is explicit enough to warrant the rating, I still write around a lot of it.

Sylvain registers warmth before anything else. Then, a glow of something tingling on his skin. Not unpleasant.

It only lasts a fraction of a second.

Then it’s sharp pulsing pain, surging upward from somewhere down by his toes, swallowing the entirety of his being and all Sylvain can manage is some loud horrible strangled wheeze that crawls out of his throat.

His body feels heavy. It’s as if something is laying flat on his chest and pressing down, pressing him in further and further onto the deep dark flat _something_ he feels. Sylvain tries to grasp at the pain, tries to rip his arm away from wherever it is they are and fist at the burning in his chest but his fingers curl against something instead and he can’t make out what it is other than the fact that it’s warm too.

There’s no memory of how this came to be. There is only the suggestion that he might have once been cold. The kind of cold that burns the skin and bites at it. He remembers only the white blanket of deathcalling snow.

Sylvain remembers pain.

He thinks he’s moving but he can’t be sure. His head is too heavy to know, but the pain shoots from his legs all the way up to his chest in a wave as he gasps again.

He can barely hear his own breaths, too wrapped up in the white-hot hurt of what he thinks is his leg and he’s grasping and gasping and trying so hard to open his eyes.

_Open your damn eyes._

But he can’t. They stay shut and his body feels frozen again even among all this heat.

Then, the firm voice of someone familiar. 

“Sylvain,” they say, “I’m here.”

 _Who_? He can’t say.

“It’s okay,” they tell him, “I’m not going anywhere.”

He thinks he feels something on his head. He bucks it off - he thinks it’s an accident.

Then, nothing else for a while.

* * *

Sylvain’s eyes blink almost open as the room spins. Something still hurts- too much, but he’s not gasping anymore. It’s more like a low rumbled groan. 

It’s dark other than a burst of light that seems so far away, like the draining light one might see on the horizon when the last remnants of day fades. A single fog-hazed silhouette he almost recognizes is framed by that dying flickering light. It turns and runs towards him but he can’t get his eyes open all the way. He can’t see.

 _Who_? He wonders again.

* * *

This time, as he comes to, Sylvain feels his hands before the stinging sharp pain that likes to overtake him. He’s isolated the source now. He thinks: it's his left leg. It _must_ be his left leg. Everything he feels always seems to start there before it spreads and spreads and spreads until he can feel it in his teeth and the way they grind and grind while he whimpers.

Sylvain tries to lift his hands but they only sink further down. There’s something warm in it, he registers. It feels like someone.

Someone. Hmm.

He muscles his strength, pushing past the way his leg reminds and reminds, and concentrates only on his hands.

When that doesn’t work, he concentrates on only the left one, then, only on his fingers.

They twitch.

A weight he hadn’t been aware of on his forearm lifts abruptly and Sylvain feels the tingling underneath his skin, from the cold or the circulation, he cannot tell. Perhaps both. 

“Sylvain?” The voice calls again. 

_Ah,_ he realizes. His eyes blink open but they don’t need to because he knows now.

_Ingrid._

He tries to breathe life to her name but nothing comes out.

“Don’t-” she says as she turns towards the nightstand. He watches her as her figure slowly comes into focus. “Drink this first.”

He manages barely to tilt up, his body is coming to, alongside the ebbing hurt of something that still feels too raw. Ingrid brings a small grey cup to him and pitches the lukewarm water into his mouth only for him to dribble pathetically all over himself.

“Ingrid,” he barely rasps, pushing her hands away when she tries to clean up after him. Sylvain doesn’t recognize his own voice. He barely hears it at all. It’s too weak and dry, like something had been clawing at the sides of his windpipe with sharp fingernails to climb upwards and out.

He is hoarse from more than disuse. 

“You’ve been out for a while,” she explains calmly, although the furrow of her face tells her that she’s worried.

He frowns but even that hurts, “-long?”

Ingrid must notice his pain because she starts fussing over him again, fingers smoothing the edges of the blanket thrown on him. “Three days since I found you. Before that...”

“Mmm.” He tries to sit up fully but the second he shifts, the second he sinks his palms against the surface and drags his elbow on top of what he now knows to be a too-soft mattress, a shot of searing pain shoots from his shin all the way through to his head, startling him so hard that his hands slip and his head bangs back against a worn pillow beneath him

Ingrid’s not fast enough to catch him but her hands find his shoulders to help him back down properly and readjust his position. “Your leg is broken,” she explains, despite Sylvain having already guessed. “All the healers have been conscripted so we’ve been making do the old-fashioned way.”

He’s too tired and sore to be disheartened by it. What’s a broken leg on a stuffy noble worth anyway? Not more than a soldier at war.

Sylvain tries again to sit up, this time more carefully, wincing as Ingrid frowns and hovers over him, her hands still holding onto his shoulders. 

“You should lie back down.” 

He shakes his head and tries to jumble a sentence out, only half of it forms. “Down for long enough.” 

Ingrid’s lips press into a thin beautifully familiar line but she doesn’t refute him anymore than she has already. She must know that he would try again anyway and grit through the pain now that he knows it’s there. 

She helps him up, too cautious for the kind of care he’s used to from her, and shifts him so that his back is to the headboard.

Ingrid can be kind and patient when she wants to be. Her bedside manner is perhaps a little clumsy but still good typically when deserved. Sylvain just hardly ever deserves it. 

Sylvain is used to cutting remarks as she shuffles through medical supplies. He is used to a lecture on her tongue that he’s memorized as he grins through the way she holds ice packs to his head. 

But there is only silence when she helps him, silence and shaky hands.

It takes longer than it should. He thinks he’s covered in sweat by the end of it. He knows, at the very least, that the room is spinning and that the shirt - not his own, he realizes, sticks to his skin as he heaves harsh heavy but steady breaths. One of Ingrid’s hand grips tightly around his as he rests. Sylvain’s glad for it. He thinks that if she were to let go, he’d probably slip away again.

Ingrid reaches for the water she had left on the nightstand from earlier with her free hand and this time Sylvain is oriented just enough to take the cup from her.

He has enough strength to lift it to his lips but not enough for him to swallow immediately. It seems like a monumental task suddenly.

Ingrid is watching him carefully, he knows, and so he allows the water to slosh in his mouth for just another second before shutting his eyes and letting himself drink.

It is not a pleasant experience. 

Which is a silly thought to have while drinking water but he supposes he is in a lot worse shape than he had thought.

He allows himself another second of rest before trying for another gulp. 

“Slow down,” Ingrid scolds. Her hand reaches out towards his cup but at the last second, she pauses, her fingers naturally curling towards her palm, seeming to think better of it. For a moment, her hand hovers awkwardly stretched out between them before finally dropping aside.

Sylvain smiles and listens for once, allowing himself an easy sip. Then, he allows himself a moment to survey.

Ingrid is doing a good job of acting patient but even in his state, tired and sore, he can tell when she’s lying. Mostly because she has always been terrible at it. 

Her behavior with him is peculiar. He has already noted this. Usually, when she is caring for him after a wound, she carries with her an infinite frustration. It is huffing and biting words and stomping back and forth. Today, the only thing that manifests is the slight way she shuffles her feet underneath a too large old looking fur robe.

Ingrid is anxious and hoping not to show it. He must have worried her greatly. 

The guilt of which twists in his chest and it only eases when Sylvain lets his fingers weave through hers and squeeze, hoping to quell some of her restlessness. It does not work but Ingrid at least squeezes back.

His eyes drift towards the rest of the room. The light from the window tells him that midday will soon wane but it is too fogged up from the warmth inside of the room to see much more. 

The room itself is large and unfamiliar. It’s sparsely decorated with only a large garish rug that stretches on old hardwood, the bed he sits on, the nightstand next to him, a desk with many glass containers, and a single wooden kitchen chair.

“Where am I?” he asks.

“Galatea,” she answers, “our guest room. I found you.” 

“Found me?”

Ingrid’s frown is back. “You don’t remember?”

Sylvain leans his head back and shuts his eyes, trying to recall his last memory but nothing comes. 

Ingrid sighs and carefully sits on the edge of the bed facing him. For a moment they make eye contact but it’s brief and disappointingly fleeting.

Ingrid’s eyes cast downward, hiding from his.

Sylvain tries to catch her gaze again, ducking his head as best he can but her eyes stay steady on their hands as she begins to gnaw on her lip.

A sudden panic rises in his chest at the thought that she might pull away from him. It hurts more than the way his leg still stings.

“In the snow,” she says finally, “you went missing. I found you.”

“You found me?” he repeats.

“I suppose it’s more accurate to say that Blueberry found me.” Ingrid’s still refusing to make eye-contact. Sylvain wants to reach for her with his other hand but it’s still holding the cup and the thought of putting it back on the nightstand seems too exhausting all of a sudden. “It seems she still knows the way back.”

He’s trying to conjure up the memory again but all he gets is a flash of slumping forward on a saddle and the biting cold of snow. “She knows the way home.”

Ingrid continues as if he hadn’t said anything. “She led me to you.” 

“You trained her well,” he finds himself saying.

She shakes her head once. “Anyway, I found you in the snow. I think you fell off her. That’s probably how you broke your leg.”

It makes sense but he can’t remember it himself. Not for sure. An image forms but he can’t tell the difference between a real genuine memory and his imagination’s conjuring of what Ingrid says probably happened. The whole thing hurts his still throbbing head. “How long was I missing for?” Sylvain asks instead.

Ingrid bites her lip again. He feels her fingers begin to extract from his and he tries frantically to reach for them but he’s just too slow. Everything about his body is too slow and too weak. It’s not just a broken leg, it feels like. A broken leg wouldn’t have blacked him out for three days. There must be more. 

“I got a message last week from Felix.” 

Her voice sounds like it’s underwater and he almost loses it entirely.

Sylvain blinks again to refocus and Ingrid surprises him when she doesn’t pull her hand away completely. Instead, her fingers dance along his open palm, tapping them in some random too fast tempo. “He’d been looking for you but I don’t know for how long.”

Sylvain frowns and tries to remember what Felix looks like. It’s been so long. Almost a year - although that’s nothing compared to Ingrid’s two. She looks different now. Her hair is shorter, he hadn’t noticed that before, and now that he’s looking, Sylvain can see that her face is thinner. He wonders if the rest of her is too; he can’t tell with the robe over her. “Is he here?”

“No, he sent a courier.” Sylvain feels the aching pain of the disappointment of missing someone and knowing that you will continue to. “The snow was too heavy and he had to turn back. He should be home by now.”

Sylvain nods. Felix is safe. That’s what matters. He muscles through. “Does he know you found me?”

“I hope so,” Ingrid says, laying her hand flat against his and stretching her fingers out towards his wrist where his pulse is strongest. He’s not sure she knows she’s doing it. Although he also can’t be sure it’s not deliberate. He’s not sure what difference it makes. “I sent a message but winter has been especially bad this year. There’s no way to know.”

“Felix wouldn’t be stupid enough to keep looking.” 

It’s a statement but he knows that it’ll be taken as a question. Because they both know Felix. They both know that he would drag himself through a blizzard and freeze to death to find either of them. He pretends he doesn’t care but Felix is more softhearted than he looks. Sylvain’s not sure Felix can bear to lose anyone else. It is probably that that drives him.

“I made him promise not to,” she tells him. “We met each other on the road before the storm got too bad. I told him that if it got too bad, he had to turn back. I was flying, or well, flying when I could so I could cover more ground.”

“He didn’t walk did he?”

“No,” she says, “he may be terrible on a horse but he’s not an idiot.”

“He can be-,” a small burst of spreading panic rises in Sylvains’s chest, “-although he will never admit it.”

“He turned back,” Ingrid insists, “he promised.”

Sylvain can’t help but remember his own promise. A very old one made to Felix about not dying without the other. “He promised,” Sylvain says with his first weak smile. “He’ll keep it.”

Ingrid nods and he watches her shoulders relax just a bit but he can see her still holding the rest of the tension in. 

“Ingrid,” he whispers, and this time, it is not a whisper because he cannot make a sound but because it is entirely intentional. It’s because the look on her face hurts him more than the pain in his leg. Sylvain grits through the pain he feels when he shifts closer to her, and brings his hand up to her face to tuck the hair that had fallen into her eyes away and finally draw her gaze to his. “What aren’t you telling me?” 

She shakes her head again but Sylvain keeps his hold steady. He feels stronger than he’s felt in who knows how long. The grip on the cup is weak in his other hand but he hardly cares. He only cares about the sadness in her eyes, the one that makes his heart sting and wonder why. 

“I thought-” her voice hitches and she stops.

He wishes she wouldn’t. He wishes she would say it.

“Thought what?”

Ingrid breathes a shaky breath that reaches him. He watches her swallow, watches the way her eyes shine in the light lit from the fireplace, and what’s left of an afternoon sun, framing her in a beautiful orange halo. “I thought you were going to die.”

It strikes him how scared she is. He hadn’t seen it before, too distracted by reorienting himself to the world, to have noticed the difference. Sylvain is used to a worrying Ingrid. He is used, to an extent, a fussing Ingrid, he is not used to a scared Ingrid - a terrified Ingrid. It’s this that’s different.

“I’m here,” he says. 

“You almost weren’t,” she snaps before rising and slipping out of his grasp. He is too slow to stop her and he misses her immediately. His hand misses hers in a way it never has before. He thinks it’s because it has been so long since they’ve seen each other. “You were in a bad way when I found you Sylvain. I thought you were dead.”

He flinches at her words. He wishes he remembered. 

“When we finally warmed you up and cleaned your leg, we realized that you were getting too warm. Infection probably.” She shakes her head again, the words barely able to come out.

But they don’t need to. Now that he can see her, in the light, he can see the way her body is worn. He had been too distracted by the simple beautiful sight of her that he hadn’t noticed the way her eyes were sunken in, her skin pale, as if she spent all her time fussing over him that she barely cared for herself.

Sylvain can imagine it now. He can see it clearly in his mind’s eye the way that Ingrid forgets. Especially in this house. Especially when it’s someone close to her. Sylvain has no illusions of their relationship but he knows that he means a great deal to her. He knows that, like Felix, she cannot afford to lose anyone else either. Not after Dimitri - not after Glenn. 

“I’m sorry -”

“It’s not your fault,” Ingrid interrupts fiercely. He has never heard that from her. “Or maybe it is, I don’t know - what -” Ingrid takes a breath and lowers her voice, “what were you doing out there Sylvain? Where were you going?”

His mouth opens but nothing comes out. In any other case - back in their Academy days, a ready-made lie would have spilled out but today he has nothing because this is not like before. This is not like all the millions of other times she’s scolded and lectured him. This is serious.

Sylvain had been close to death. He knows it. He can feel it.

Ingrid pulled him back. He knows that too, although she does not say it. Neither does he.

“I don’t know.” It’s the truth. “I can’t remember.”

Ingrid sighs. Sylvain watches as she takes a few breaths to steady herself before she returns to his side, perching on the bed. Her hand slips into his. “That’s okay,” she says, “but you don’t get to do that again.”

“I won’t.” He pauses before adding, “I promise.”

And the look on her face, fierce in the blinding light of a crackling fire tells him that he damn well better keep it.

* * *

Memory comes back slowly but not fully. Sylvain only gets patchwork pieces that he has to string together into something of a narrative. It is the only way for him to understand what happened to him.

He knows that he was trying to go somewhere at first. There was definitely something he had to do, probably meet with another noble somewhere, but then the weather got bad and he had to seek shelter. Sylvain is pretty sure, given the circumstances, that he did not find it. Instead, he must have wandered. He doesn’t remember for how long. More than a day at least.

He does remember Blueberry. He remembers being grateful for her but also thinking that Ingrid would kill him if he froze a horse she raised to death.

He doesn’t remember the fall that must have happened. 

“Where is she?” he asks at one point as Ingrid fusses after him. She barely leaves his side and when she does, it is very briefly and usually to fetch something. “Blueberry?”

“In the stables,” Ingrid says.

“She’s a good horse. I think she saved my life.”

Ingrid nods, probably too tired to say more. He wishes she would rest. She doesn’t like to, he knows. 

“Ingrid,” he says, stilling her hand from where it wipes a cloth against his nightstand from a spill earlier. “I’m okay. You should rest.” 

She shakes her head. “You’ve only been conscious a few hours. I want to make sure that you stay that way.”

“How long have you been here?” he asks, “looking after me? When was the last time you took care of yourself?”

“I’m not the one with the broken leg.” 

“And it’s not going to go anywhere. Go take a nap or a bath, or eat - when was the last time you ate?”

Ingrid stares him down but does not answer. This alarms him. 

“You need to eat,” he says, “ _please._ ”

She sighs. “I’ll bring something back for the both of us.”

Ingrid is true to her word, like she always is. Sylvain learns that the only way he gets her to care for herself is in the guise of caring for him so he goes back and forth with her for a while.

“You could always come take a bath with me.” He grins at her later. The sunlight is gone now and the room is lit only by the fireplace that Ingrid is careful to feed. “Goddess knows I need one.”

The shirt he’s wearing is not the one he came in with. Neither are his pants. Someone, probably Ingrid, must have helped him into them when he was unconscious but it’s likely that he’s been wearing them for days. His leg is splinted. 

Sylvain is thankful that there is no mirror in the room. He’s afraid of what he looks like. Afraid of what Ingrid sees. He feels smaller, like he’s lost a lot of himself in the days he’s been out.

Ingrid smiles a little. It’s weaker than what he’d like. “You wouldn’t be able to get in the tub.” 

“That’s why I have you to help me.”

She looks him over once again. “You wouldn’t make it,” she says bluntly, “It’s down the hall but I can bring a basin over and a fresh set of clothes.”

“Whose are they?”

“My brother’s. They probably don’t fit right but -”

Sylvain cuts her off before she can start apologizing, “I’m just glad I have any at all. I mean, unless-”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Ingrid interrupts, but unlike her usual cutting remark, her tone is gentle and fond. “I’ll go get it.” 

* * *

It’s a strange feeling, undressing in front of Ingrid. There is nothing romantic about it and she must have seen it all before but it is still charged. It feels too intimate somehow, even when all she’s doing is nursing him.

Maybe that’s what’s intimate about it all.

Ingrid had even offered to help him out of his clothes but this is something he would much rather do himself now that he can. 

But it’s much harder than it should be. Not because he can’t undo a few buttons but because he had to muscle himself off the bed and into the wooden chair and even with Ingrid’s help, that had been difficult.

It had taken them a while; there is nothing quite like the pain that comes even from the suggestion of the movement of the broken side of his body but Ingrid is patient and he had done his absolute best not to press the entirety of his weight onto her but even if he had, Sylvain is sure that she wouldn’t have dropped him.

She is still just as strong as she has always been. He can tell.

“You’re still training,” he says, regaining his breath as he begins to undo his buttons. Every one of them reveals more and more of the blotches on his body. His skin is painted purple and green, his torso a canvas filled with bruised patches and broken skin. For the first time in a very long time, he feels he can almost count all of his ribs just by sight.

It feels like his body but it does not look like his body.

He lets one of his hands run through his face and hair. He’s still not in sight of a mirror but he can feel the beard that’s begun to grow, too long for his liking. He had somehow not noticed it before. He’ll have to ask Ingrid for a shaving kit when given the chance.

Ingrid is polite enough to look away and busy herself with the washrag in the steaming basin beside him. “Have you not been?”

“I try,” he says, finishing and shrugging the shirt off with a wince. His shoulder burns. Sylvain lets the shirt drop in a heap on the floor beside the chair. “But you know me, I’ve never really been the type.” 

Mostly though, it’s because he’d been busy. He’d been spending a lot of his time with his father, accompanying the Margrave through many unpleasant but necessary diplomatic meetings. 

Even from her kneeling position, with her head down and hands squeezing out the cloth, Sylvain can see Ingrid’s eyes narrow. “We’re at war Sylvain.”

His lips press to a thin sad line Ingrid does not see. “I know.” 

* * *

Ingrid lets Sylvain do most of the washing. She stays beside him the whole time, just in case something happens and even if she had been sure nothing would happen, Sylvain can’t reach the basin easily on his own.

Silence falls between the two of them for the most part, outside the water sloshing or occasional grunt or groan from Sylvain that makes her flinch. She thinks, at first, that Sylvain had tried to start a conversation. It was probably his attempt at making her feel more comfortable, but she had never been worried about that in the first place. 

It’s not that he’s undressed. He’s actually quite decent, having thrown a towel over his lap. It’s that she can’t bear to look at the broken way his body looks. It reminds her of the way he looked in the snow when she’d found him. 

Unmoving. Barely breathing. Blood red on white snow. 

So she looks away under the guise of being polite. Even though she had already seen all of him when they had to tear his clothes away, when she had to help the doctor set the broken bloody bone before shuffling him into something more decent.

Sylvain is just so frail and thin, thinner than she has ever seen him and honestly, it scares her.

Ingrid had been so sure he would never wake up. She had been so scared to leave him, afraid he would slip away alone with no one there. The thought makes her want to sob, but she refuses to do that in front of Sylvain, not when her worry does nothing for him. 

“Uh, Ingrid?” he says, eventually, breaking her from her spell. He’s holding the cloth between them. 

Ingrid grabs it and dips it back into the water like she had done several dozen times already and says nothing.

Sylvain continues, “Do you mind helping me? I can’t reach my back.” 

“Oh, uh, sure.” 

Sylvain shifts so that he’s sitting sideways on the chair. He throws his arm over the wooden back on his left side as support as he leans into it, clearly very exhausted. She frowns at his leg, eying it, but steps behind him anyway.

His back is bruised too, dark splotches of blue, green, and purples stretching across almost the entirety of it, accompanied by some old very worn scars she has never seen before.

Ingrid presses her lips together and, gentle as she can, lays the cloth on his back. 

Sylvain hisses, startling her, and she retracts quickly, so quickly that she forgets to take the rag with her and it falls onto the floor. “Sorry!” she says quickly, bending over to pick it up and throw it into the basin, “did I hurt you?”

“No,” he says, turning his neck towards her, “well, not really. Just didn’t expect it. You can - you can keep going.” 

She nods and lets out the shaky breath she feels she is always holding now and tries again.

Sylvain still inhales sharply, but this time, ready for it, Ingrid allows herself to continue. She carefully runs the warm cloth rag across his body. Its unraveled strands catch on her fingertips and scratch against her palms even through its dampness so Ingrid wraps the stray frays around her fingers, so as not to catch too roughly on Sylvain back.

There’s a layer of dead skin, built up while Sylvain had slept. Ingrid hesitates only for a second before applying gentle pressure. Sylvain only grunts a little while his body shifts underneath her fingertips.

She concentrates on his neck, unsure of how hard she can press. She dabs softly at it, managing to only wet the end bits of his hair, and realizes that there’s no way to get him clean without Sylvain wincing. She descends lower, onto his shoulders where she finds a small smattering of freckles on each blade. She’s never seen that before, and, at first, Ingrid thinks it’s dirt that’s clung into his skin, so she scrubs a little too hard before realizing, reddening one of the only unbruised parts of his body. She pulls the cloth back to take a closer look, and the darkened dots on his skin churns an inexplicable part of her that wants to trace each freckle with her fingertips. She moves to the center of his back quickly, where she lays the rag open and flat and uses both palms to press the cloth against him. Her eyes drift down and follow the stray water drops that trickle alongside the curve of his spine, lower and lower and lower until- 

“Ingrid?”

She’d stopped without realizing it. “Uh,” she stumbles, feeling herself flush. Her eyes snap back up at the cloth she’s pressing too hard onto him, not that Sylvain would ever know where she’d been looking. “Sorry, just-”

Sylvain hums something and leans his head to rest against the wooden back of the chair again. It is the first sound he’s made that doesn’t sound like pain. Ingrid chances a glance at the side of his face, where she discovers his eyes shut and a softness in his features she hasn’t seen in days - years. 

Sylvain did not sleep well when he was unconscious. He was always twitching or moving or groaning. His face furrowed and twisted in pain and she had done everything she could to soothe him. She had placed wet cold rags on his head for his fever. She had held his hands and his face and whispered soft words of warmth into his ear. She had tried to smooth out the wrinkles on his forehead as she sung some terrible lullaby Dorothea taught her that she doesn’t remember the words to. Nothing worked.

But now, for the first time, Sylvain seems at peace, even when Ingrid knows he still hurts. 

Something catches in her chest, half a breath, in time with the way tears trail towards her chin. 

“Ingrid?” 

Sylvain’s eyes blink open slowly and she quickly retreats behind him to swipe at her eyes. She doesn’t want to alarm him. 

“You’re okay,” she whispers, mostly to herself.

“Yeah,” he says, turning a bit towards her.

Ingrid holds him where he is, her hand a firm barrier pressing onto his shoulder that forces him to face forward. She’s slightly afraid that if he were the one to touch her, if he were to try to hold onto her, to support her and not the other way around, she’ll fall apart in his naked arms.

There’s no shame in falling apart, Ingrid tells herself, especially since it’s happened before. She hadn’t been lying when she told him all those years ago that he’d been the one to finally drag her out of her mourning period. She’s fallen into him since, after the siege on the monastery as they learn to cope poorly with the way war calls. 

But she’s prideful. This, she admits, and more than that, Sylvain is literally broken physically. She can’t ask him to hold her up when he can’t even bathe himself without her. 

Her hand dips back into the hot water basin, rapidly cooling in the winter air, and she knows that she should hurry up lest she leaves Sylvain shivering bare in the cold. The fireplace can only do so much. 

Ingrid picks the rag back up, and presses it flat against his lower back, kneeling behind him for better reach before washing the rest of his body.

They say nothing more.

* * *

Night falls and with it comes the drifting cold from the loss of daylight. Ingrid pulls her father’s robe tighter over herself as she shifts in the wooden chair. After the bath, Sylvain had insisted that she take her own and when she returned, she had found him sleeping.

It alarmed her at first. When she first walked back into the room, she had thought, for one terrifying moment, that Sylvain had slipped away in the few minutes she’d been gone. 

She still feels a bit ill when she considers the possibility of it, of the stillness of this sleep, but then Ingrid fixes her eyes on the slow steady rise of his chest and tries to let herself calm, tries to let the dropping sensation of free-falling into despair fade away.

Ingrid has already lost too many people in her life. Her mother, Glenn, Dimitri now with the war, and she could do nothing for any of them. She had been too young for her mother, too far away for Glenn, and absolutely helpless for Dimitri, but Sylvain is right in front of her.

He had been dying right in front of her. She was sure of it in the snow. She was sure of it when she carried his broken body in her arms and hauled him onto her pegasus. She was sure when the fever overtook him.

Ingrid was so damned sure Sylvain would die.

It never really goes away now with war. There is always worry in her mind. Her brothers, all conscripted. Her father, aging rapidly in his study as he strategizes. Her friends, scattered all across the continent. Her Prince, dead. All while she holes up in Galatea, barely allowed to emerge for scattered bandit raids or cleanup for fear of losing the last hope Galatea has to old glory.

The panic is always on the cusp of reemerging, on returning in full force, on crashing into her and her body and exploding, but it does ebb. Ingrid forces it to.

Sylvain is here. He is alive. The fever has passed. She refuses to let anything more happen to him. 

Ingrid makes herself comfortable in the chair as best as she can. She’s grown used to the way it feels, having spent most of her time perched while watching Sylvain sleep when not otherwise caring for him. She tries to take comfort in the fact that he looks much more comfortable now than he did before, back when he was shivering or writhing in constant sometimes quiet pain. 

She tries to forget the way he screamed when they set his leg. She is glad that he doesn’t remember. 

She winces when the chair creaks too loud while she shifts, loud enough to wake Sylvain. 

“Hey,” he smiles, brown eyes blinking open. 

Ingrid scoots the chair closer to his bedside. “Hey.” 

They keep doing this. She thinks it’s because they’re both tired. Where they will talk very briefly before lulling into long stretches of silence again, as if they were drinking each word in slowly before speaking again. It is a nice change of pace from horrid war stories, given frantically in quick rapid reports as everyone paces about.

Sylvain cannot go anywhere. Ingrid refuses to leave him. That only gives them time, which means everything when they seem to have so little else these days.

“Came to say goodnight?” Sylvain’s grin is playful, something that Ingrid sometimes hates but today, she is sure that there is nothing more wonderful than the curve of his lip and the joy in his eyes, however subdued it may be from the circumstance.

He shifts up onto his elbows, trying for a better look at her, she knows, but Ingrid presses him back down without thinking much about it, too used to the way she has spent the last three days caring for him. “I’m staying.” 

Sylvain’s eyes widen just a bit but then they relax again, into something easy. “Yeah, sure, okay,” he says, wincing as he shuffles over to make room for her.

“In the chair,” Ingrid clarifies quickly as she feels her cheeks warm. She hopes that Sylvain doesn’t notice. She thinks, with the dim light of a slowly dying fire, that he won’t. 

His brow creases. She doesn’t like that on him anymore. Not when she has spent days staring at them twisted in pain. 

“What is it?” she asks, settling back into her chair where the familiar pains in her lower back and sore neck call to her again.

“Ingrid-” the look of disapproval on Sylvain’s face is impossible to miss, “-that’s ridiculous. You don’t have to do that.”

“Someone has to feed the fire.” It’s a particularly bad winter, too cold to go without the fire, even with two sets of blankets and it doesn’t help that the house is incredibly old and broken. It always feels dangerously cold in the winter and much too hot in the summers. “And you can’t walk so…”

“So sleep here,” he says.

Ingrid tenses.

“There’s plenty of room,” Sylvain continues, “and it’ll be warmer with the two of us.”

They’ve laid next to each other before. During their Academy days, Sylvain would often sprawl out on her dorm bed making himself much too comfortable while she ignored him but he would always leave.

This should be the same with only one slight difference and yet, it does not feel that way.

“The chair is fine.” She tells him rigidly.

Sylvain’s frown is deep. “Have you been sleeping in the chair the last few days?”

She doesn’t want to answer.

“Ingrid, that’s ridiculous,” he scolds lightly again before pulling the covers open. An invitation. “Just, just get in.”

She shifts again in the chair. Several things come to mind - first, Sylvain’s leg combined with the bruises on his body and her fear of rolling over and hurting him. Second, her father, down the hall, and how he’d probably murder Sylvain if he found out. Lastly, the most secret and the primary source of her hesitation, the image of his naked back, and the water trailing down it. Her face flushes, Ingrid hopes that in the dim light Sylvain will mistake it for something else. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

Sylvain stares hard at Ingrid with an expression she is not sure how to read. It’s too hard for her to hold his gaze. Her eyes wander to his hands instead, where they clench and unclench on the bedsheets. 

“I promise I won’t…” He hesitates, trailing off. Ingrid does not think he’ll finish, letting the thought be abandoned after considering but then he lowers his voice to almost a whisper, “I promise I won’t try anything.” 

Ingrid’s eyes snap up to meet his. The honesty she sees in the brief second before Sylvain ducks his head just slightly, almost shy were it not for the fact that she knows him well enough to see guilt, almost takes her breath away. It never crossed her mind that Sylvain would do anything. Sylvain is playfully flirty with her, sure, but there is a line that they have, a careful toeing line. If anyone’s crossed it. It would’ve been her, earlier today. “I didn’t think you would.” 

“I just - I didn’t want that to be the reason you say no.”

Ingrid chews her lip. Honestly, she wants to. The thought of a warm bed and burrowing in a blanket is much more appealing than another restless night shifting around the world’s worst old wooden chair.

Sylvain’s eyes soften. His voice calls out in a soft kind of earnest plea. He stretches his palm out and up. “It’s cold Ingrid,” he rationalizes, “please?”

“Okay.” 

Ingrid rises from her seat and moves towards him, hesitating for a second over the bed as Sylvain shifts over more, dropping the hand she does not take. She watches as he carefully lifts his broken splinted foot and moves it.

She slips her thick fur robe off to reveal a thin mint green nightdress. It is too light to wear by winter standards but her father’s thick coat compensates enough that she tries not to complain. The rush of cool air prickles at the exposed skin along her collarbone, but not more than the way Sylvain gazes at her. She has never seen that look on him before. She doesn’t know what it is. Perhaps she is reading too much into it, nervous from the sudden awareness of how long it’s been since they’d last seen each other until this moment now that he asks her to share a bed.

“I can’t sleep in it,” she explains even though Sylvain hadn’t asked. 

It’s a lie. She’s been sleeping in the robe for days, her only source of warmth outside of the fire she feeds throughout the night since she had given Sylvain the spare blankets. She’d spent several nights now clutching it close to her body, letting the thick thistles trap her warmth as best as it can manage while she dozes in the chair once the exhaustion finally takes her. 

The bed is a dream. It doesn’t matter that it’s old or that the sheets smell mostly of Sylvain. Ingrid’s body relaxes immediately into its softness and she sinks and sinks and sinks and as Ingrid sinks, every old pain she’s pushed away calls to her. Her knees crack when she finally lays her legs straight out. Her calves strain and pull too tight, and the dull throb of her lower back pulses in even spurts that spread upwards into her spine.

Sylvain stirs next to her. She can already feel his body heat, even when she is careful not to touch him. That alone, almost lulls her to sleep. It certainly brings her comfort. He rumbles something deep and low that originates from his chest and travels directly into hers. “You okay?”

Ingrid turns to face him. Sylvain’s blinking slowly at her as he folds the blanket over her. His face is turned towards hers and he is so close, only several inches away, even while lying on his back. 

“Yes,” she breathes, and then her eyes cannot stay open. The last image she sees is Sylvain’s soft expression while she drifts into the warmth that welcomes her and sleeps soundly for hours and hours.

* * *

Sylvain wakes to Ingrid nestled deep into his chest. At some point in the night, she must have crawled up to him or he must have pulled her in. Perhaps, maybe even an element of both.

He hopes it’s both. 

Ingrid’s resting on some bruised stinging part of him but he cannot bring himself to care when she looks so peaceful. It is breathtakingly beautiful. Sylvain had always thought her to be pretty but he has never been so struck dumb by her. She is Ingrid, whom he has known forever. Ingrid, one of his closest and best friends. 

There is a line.

Or, perhaps, there was a line. Now it feels blurred, especially with her so close. Especially now that she is sleeping. He has never really had the opportunity to just look upon her. They had always been too busy pushing and pulling instead. He’d prod with a joke and she’d snap back just as fast. There was never time to just gaze and now that he has, Sylvain is not sure he ever wants to look away. He is not sure he can.

Ingrid moves very little in her sleep. She’s settled into the deepest of slumbers which only tells him that the days and nights she has spent watching over him have taken a bad toll on her body. 

He’d like to say he’s grateful for it, for the way she cares for him, but he can’t help but feel that it is undeserved somehow because there is nothing he can give her in return. There never ever was. Sylvain is always taking from her.

And yet, somehow, no matter how hard he pushes, Ingrid never leaves. She sinks deeper instead. Stubborn.

“Always huh?” He can’t help but whisper into the crown of her head, “you always come for me.”

The hand not already wrapped around her, the one that’s not holding her against him, comes up to hand trace the hair on her forehead, brushing it softly away so that he can look more fully onto her face. He lets his fingers linger as he trails downward, and for a moment he feels guilty about it, guilty that he is touching her like this without her knowledge but then Ingrid burrows deeper into his chest and he can’t help the way he tightens his hold on her.

He hopes they can stay like this forever.

Some old buried part of his heart defrosts, kickstarting a new slow beat of something warm and light.

It is Ingrid and the crunch of her boots dropping into the snow, descending on him from above on pegasus wings. A brilliant blinding beacon he’d thought he’d imagined as a last thought before he was sure he would die in the cold unforgiving snow.

* * *

She stirs sometime in what he thinks is the late morning. Sylvain can’t tell. There is not a very good view of the window from where he lays so he can’t be sure of the time of day. He is a little sore from staying still for so long but he couldn’t bring himself to move her, not when he doesn’t want her anywhere else.

“Morning,” Ingrid yawns, shifting so that she can look up at him. He is surprised by her easy comfort here. He had expected her to be somewhat embarrassed by how tangled they are together. He’d expected her to spring off of him violently. “How long have you been awake?”

“Not long,” he lies.

Ingrid shifts off of him into the space next to him and the immediate loss of her weight makes him miss her and her warmth. 

He turns himself and watches the worry on Ingrid’s face, “You shouldn’t-”

But Sylvain ignores her, grunting a bit as he transitions to his side, glad for the way he is finally off his back, even if his broken leg is left in an awkward position. “It’s fine.”

Ingrid’s expression tells him that she’s still wary but she concedes, allowing it. 

They end up closer than he had anticipated. Close enough for her breath to reach his. He blinks, staring at her, only a little surprised that Ingrid lets him. Ingrid’s eyes are the same deep green he’s always known them to be, but today, in the morning light and this close up, he can see the specks of subtle amber burst throughout her irises. He had never noticed it before. 

He’s pretty sure it’s his new favorite color.

Sylvain’s hand reaches out on its own to brush the hair that’s fallen into her face away so that he can see the whole of her face, to see more clearly the way she looks at him, framed by natural light. Sylvain finds that he enjoys the way the strands feel in his fingers, and lets them linger for a moment before his fingers brush against her cheeks.

Ingrid shudders underneath his touch, eyes suddenly awake and wide. He can see, in his peripheral, the way her breath catches, but she does not push him away.

“I thought you weren’t going to try anything.” Ingrid’s chest is rising faster in perfect time with the rapid beating of his own heart but her whisper is calm, with only the faintest trace of uncertainty. 

Somehow, he finds his voice, quiet and almost lost in the morning light. “I lied.” 

There is no plan to this but there is no hesitation either now that he feels how badly he wants it. Sylvain leans towards her until their lips barely graze, nose against nose, and waits.

It is Ingrid that closes the last of the distance.

* * *

Sylvain’s kisses are not what Ingrid anticipated them to be. She had expected a certain kind of fervor to them, perhaps even the sort of wolfishness that comes from a deep-seated need that she knows that he has. Ingrid has caught him enough times behind stables and barnyards to believe that he doesn’t normally kiss like this, slow and methodical, as if he is drinking her in with the deep breaths she can feel against her cheeks. Perhaps he is being careful because it’s her or perhaps it’s because he’s still in pain and trying to be mindful of the way he moves but Ingrid finds that she doesn’t mind it. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

He’s more experienced than her. This is a fact, so his slow and almost steady pace allows her the opportunity to explore him. It allows her the opportunity to discover what it is she likes best.

And she finds that it’s the way his tongue moves, careful, slow, guiding her in. She hadn’t anticipated that either.

He is careful of his hands though. He keeps them firmly on her waist, grounding her, reminding her. Hers are braced against his shoulder and jaw, where the stubble from her sloppy attempt at shaving him tickles and scratches her fingers in the most satisfying way. She pulls him back in every time they break away.

She can’t help herself.

He isn’t supposed to be the one with restraint. Ingrid is not supposed to be the one tugging him towards her. This isn’t supposed to happen. They aren’t supposed to kiss and they definitely aren’t supposed to do it in a shared bed behind a closed door in her father’s house of all places. 

“Sylvain,” she whispers, finally pulling away. He steals one last quick kiss from her before settling back into the pillow, a self-satisfied smirk on his face. 

“Yes?”

Ingrid sits up to stare down at him, unsure of where things between them sit, but then she looks at him and almost laughs, breaking any sense of the tension between them. Sylvain’s a mess. His hair is a disaster from sleep, his shirt is wrinkled from where she had fisted it at one point, and his grin way too wide. 

“Nothing,” she says, lightly. She hadn’t expected this playfulness. It feels almost normal somehow, comfortable, as if she hadn’t been trying to learn how his jaw feels in her hands. “We should eat and then I need to take a look at your leg.”

He frowns but only just a bit and the way his eyes are still teasing tells him it’s more of a pout than anything. “Or...” He says, shifting to sit up with a little bit of effort. His hand reaches out to catch the sleeve of her dress, tugging it gently towards him. “We could just go back to what we were doing.”

Ingrid laughs again. “Maybe later. If you’re lucky.”

He does end up quite lucky.

* * *

The next few days roll by slowly and without too much fanfare, one cold winter snow day slipping into the next. Sylvain’s leg is still in awful shape and it hurts like hell but he’s at least stronger now that he can eat and the sharp biting pain comes and goes, settling into a low echo in the back of his mind most of the time. 

He makes a habit of hobbling around as much as he can. At first, Ingrid had resisted, insisting that he rest more, but laying around in bed watching her watch him was doing no one any favors, especially since her looks are now laced with brand new meanings.

His are too, to be fair.

She fishes out an old ornate cane but Sylvain’s not quite strong enough to make much use out of it. He prefers to lean against Ingrid. She says nothing about the excuse he uses to touch her. 

She must know. She has known him for so long that some things can stay unsaid. It has nothing to do with the fact that Sylvain is afraid to say them.

Ingrid is still so strong. She doesn’t complain about the way he needs her. She just lets him curl around her shoulders and stands him up straight as she can. He is taller than her by quite a bit so he has to lean on her more but she says nothing about it, even when his weight gets heavier and heavier.

If it were anyone else, or perhaps, in any other circumstance even if it was with her, Sylvain would probably balk at the help. He likes to handle things on his own and show his weaknesses to no one. He is stubborn like that. It is one of his many flaws. He hates the way he leans on his friends and takes from them without ever giving in return.

But he doesn’t mind this with Ingrid. He doesn’t mind the way she practically carries him, carries more than just his body. He is greedy like that, he knows.

It probably helps that after each stop for rest, after his breath returns, Ingrid allows him to kiss her and doesn’t complain or note when he stops more than he has to - doesn’t care that he’s still taking from her. 

Sylvain’s not sure he knows how to stop. 

Ingrid is addictive. A slow kind of rolling lazy addiction that he forgets about until he’s gone too long without it. No other person has made him feel this way. No other kiss as tender or as heady. Still, he is afraid enough of scaring her that he restrains and restrains barely. Just enough to trail the lightest touches against her jaw before her tongue finds new ways to tease his.

They don’t talk about it, this thing between them, not really. Not outside of his teasing jokes for another kiss, or his not unusual playful flirtations. It mostly feels like a strange aside of their already long-existing friendship. 

He thinks that maybe Ingrid might be a little afraid of it. 

It is not anything she has said or done, other than the way she hesitates just slightly at times, watching, but he would have expected Ingrid to be the one to say something. She would be the one to ask. Sylvain has always been a coward after all. Ingrid is the headstrong one. She is smart but she often acts before she thinks, running on instinct and adrenaline and the wholeness of the ideals she holds deep in her heart and apologizing afterward - sometimes. She does not often hesitate.

But she does here. She does with him. It feels like they are always on the cusp of addressing this thing between them but instead, they tend to let it devolve into their lips on each other.

Maybe it’s because it’s easier.

Sylvain is not willing to ruin this careful quiet companionship that he has with her. He needs Ingrid right now more than ever, and the growing bursting feeling in his chest that he feels all the way down to his broken toes says he wants her more than ever. 

She can’t run. Sylvain doesn’t know what he’ll do if she decides to.

For her part, Ingrid doesn’t seem to mind. While she keeps her words to herself, she is growing bolder in every other way. Her hands have gone from bracing rigidly against his shoulder to fisting into his hair. Her chewed on broken fingernails that only used to graze now scratch on the back of his neck, and sometimes, when he’s lucky, her cold dry hands slip into the underside of his shirt, tracing carefully over the bruises she knows are still on his skin.

It is hard to be mindful of the pace at which she discovers him. Sylvain wants badly to touch every single part of her. He wants to slip his fingers into her and cut off her groans with his lips. He wants to grasp her in his hands, to heave her onto the bed they now always share and ask her to take him.

But Ingrid has never done this before. There was no one else.

His mind sours at the thought of Glenn but he knew Glenn and he knew Ingrid. They would have never done anything, Sylvain is sure, because they had been so young and because Glenn had been so noble.

Sylvain is not so noble and he is not so young but he is careful with Ingrid. Only with Ingrid. 

So against the way his body asks him to, begs him to, against the way his heart hammers and hammers until he can hear nothing else, not even the way Ingrid murmurs against the stubble on his chin, Sylvain holds and pulls away, even when Ingrid sometimes - occasionally, follows. 

* * *

Sylvain can make it down the hall now, which means he can make it all the way to the tub but Ingrid still comes with him. She says it’s because she can’t trust him not to drown, and in truth, bathing himself is still a difficult task, especially since he has to be mindful of his leg, propped up against the side and careful that it doesn’t move. 

She mostly keeps towards his back, helping him in the spots he has no hopes of reaching. Every touch of hers feels a little bit like fire against the water. It fuels him, fuels the way his body burns for hers. 

Ingrid is still careful although a lot less hesitant than she was the first time and Sylvain is often bending and glad for the way the soap hides his body. 

But Ingrid looks away less. Before, she would duck herself behind his head to focus only on the task at hand. Now he feels her slow. He knows she pretends it’s because she doesn’t have to be as mindful of the cold air between him now that he’s mostly submerged. 

He sees her eyes linger when he undresses. It’s thrilling, the unashamed - or, at least, less ashamed, way her eyes roam, cheeks pink, flushing from what he hopes is him and not the steam from the hot water in the room. Sylvain wonders if the rest of her flushes too. He hopes he gets to find out.

He might be a little too deliberate in the way he strips, slowly, his eyes watching her the entire time whenever he lets the towel drop just below his hipbones. Ingrid does usually eventually look away, often busying herself with preparing the bath. He wishes she wouldn’t, most of the time.

He is used to people staring at him. A part of him used to resent it. It is why nobody ever stuck but Ingrid doesn’t look at him like a prize to be won or a man to be wooed. She looks at him like she wants him but is afraid to - is unsure how to. Sylvain hopes that she will be bold enough to ask soon. He can think of nothing more riveting than showing her. 

But there is still that mixed up guilt, jumbled together with some strange growing unnamed feelings for her. It is mixed up with the way his body wants her. It is impossible to parse together through that blurred line what it is that is happening between his body and her body, his heart and his mind, and the quiet unyielding stubborn way she stays by his side.

Ingrid is far from stupid. She must know the way he wants her. She must have noticed, what with their bodies so damn close all the time and her hands trailing on the naked skin of his back.

He wonders if she does it on purpose or if, perhaps, she simply cannot help herself. 

“You should let me bathe you,” he tells her one day. Ingrid’s fingers are on his scalp, rough as she rubs soap into his hair.

“I don’t need the help,” she quips back but it is not snappy like it would have been in their youth. It is instead a low deep charged _something_ by his ear.

“No, but I’m asking if you want it.”

Her hands still and Sylvain freezes with her. His heart beats so loud he thinks it might make waves in the water, but then, she continues. “You can’t help me anyway, not in your state.” Her voice is familiar again. Friendly, as she wrings water from the rag onto his head. And then, “not yet.”

Sylvain hums, ears burning from her breath as he sinks deeper into the tub. “Not yet.” He agrees.

But maybe someday.

* * *

The colder it gets, the harder it is to get out of bed, especially since Sylvain’s hands and lips are always tempting her to stay. She especially likes the roughness of his stubble against her neck; it is a secret reason why she always insists on shaving him even though she is bad at it. He can’t quite cage her in yet but he always tries, burrowing into her neck with his scratchy chin and tightening his arms around her waist with a firm grip.

But it is not him that makes it difficult to leave. Often, all she has to do is lightly tap him before he pouts and pulls away. It is difficult because she does not yet know restraint the same way he does. She is not familiar with all the ways her body yearns against his, wants more, asks for more. She does not know how to temper it. She’s never really had to.

Ingrid is surprised that Sylvain can control the way he feels so well. Not with his reputation. Not with the way she has known him and caught him and dragged him out of beds and haystacks and saved him.

Ingrid wonders if it's because he is more practiced. If he knows how to expect the way his body responds while she’s still learning about hers.

Sometimes, lost in thought, she considers that perhaps he simply does not care as much. 

Ingrid does not ask. 

But she finds herself hoping that he does. It is hard not to hope with the way Sylvain groans and whispers her name like he’s never said it before, looking upon her with half-hooded eyes like he never wants to stop. 

His leg is fairing a lot better these days. He still cannot put too much weight on it but she supports him less and less and her back thanks him for it, even when her body misses the way he would fold almost entirely onto her. 

It is a maddening sensation to want him so much that she has to force herself to push him away. She is not used to the way every part of her skin heats and tingles, not used to the way the urge to kiss him grows with every single one.

It is not hard to reach over to him. Sylvain always _always_ reciprocates. Even when it’s just the barest sliver of a touch. It consumes her to figure out new ways to feel and receive him. 

They are probably even now. They find a steady partnership and reciprocity of who brushes who first, who holds on more.

It feels a bit like a dream, what with the way they’ve carved away the thoughts of war. 

This winter is a frozen moment between them. It feels, briefly, like they are living a different life. It feels, honestly, like they are not living life at all. As if time is infinite in this space hidden in a quiet old falling apart home in some snow-covered landscape of dead fields and abandoned farms, that it stretches on, day by day, just like this - the two of them together as the snow falls beyond the windows too fogged up with the heat of the room and each other. 

Winter does not stop a war. Ingrid knows this but it does enough to just barely stall it, and that is enough for recovery.

The last two years have been brutal. It has been bad news and training and fighting. Even Ingrid, after a horrible confrontation with her father, was allowed some freedom to fight and join a war effort that should have never been mounted.

It is the sure sign of pure desperation that her father allowed her to go, knowing that she could may well die and that any hopes for the future of her family would die with her. 

But here, in the guest room of Galatea, curled up in front of the fireplace, sharing an old halfway restored quilt blanket she had pulled from the bed as Sylvain’s broken leg stretches out towards the fire, leaning on each other -

Well, this little slice of time against the backdrop of some remnant of a northern snowstorm drifting towards them makes Ingrid almost forget the way war calls. 

Here, she can pretend that she does not strap Luin onto her back and with it the hopes and dreams of Galatea. Here, he is no Son of Gautier. They are simply two people waiting winter out. There is no war in this room. There is only the way Sylvain kisses her, softly and sweetly, the crackling fire warming her skin while his touch heats the rest of her body.

* * *

They are tangled together on the bed when Sylvain jolts against her, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that Ingrid has wrapped herself, very very carefully, against the good side of him when he pulls away abruptly from how she sets to redefine the still healing purple marks on his chest.

Sylvain’s broken leg is an unfortunate barrier between them but it also has the strange added benefit of adding caution to their encounters. Ingrid finds herself wanting him, wanting more, which is exhilarating in itself but it’s too new to her and his leg always reminds her of the restraint she once so easily practiced elsewhere.

Kissing Sylvain has ignited something within her. It is almost as if, now that she knows what it’s like, what is within reach, she doesn’t know if she can go back to losing it. She can never go back to not knowing the way his lips feel against hers, the way his tongue dances, the way he likes to press soft kisses along her jaw and down her neck, almost to her collarbone but never further. 

The stubble on his skin drives her mad, scratching against the parts of her that he reaches, contrasting heavily with the way his tongue traces her. The dueling sensation of the way he tastes her even when he does not wander too far is already almost too much. 

And yet she can’t stand the thought of the loss of him. She wants more.

She wants him to go further but she doesn’t want to push him. Not with his leg. Ingrid never ever wants to hurt him. She trusts that he doesn’t want to hurt her either.

Ingrid has always trusted Sylvain. Just not in this way. That is new and yet, it does not feel new. It feels like an extension of something very old they had already shared. It is simply a new direction for them to grow towards.

When he pulls away, too abrupt, abrupt enough for the rush of cold between them, she looks to his eyes and finds them strained. 

“What’s wrong?” 

Her voice is a fierce harsh whisper of ragged breath from not taking enough in, not when she had been too busy to breathe. Not when she had been pressed against the skin of Sylvain’s collarbone.

She rises above him, the blanket coming up with her. She supports herself with one hand on the pillow next to his ear but she’s careful not to let herself press her legs to his. The separation between them allows a rush of cool air underneath the blanket, enough for Sylvain to shiver. His shirt is open, halfway off, and she hadn’t noticed the way her hands must have unbuttoned it in her haste. Beneath her, Sylvain looks a ragged beautiful mess, breathing harshly, heavily, eyes closed and face twisted. 

“Did I hurt you?” She asks, nervous, alarmed. Her eyes dart to his leg and then back at him.

Sylvain lets himself breathe a few breaths but doesn’t open his eyes. “No,” he says, “just-”

Ingrid eyebrows knit together. “Then what-?”

“It’s…” he trails, biting onto his lip, before letting out another slow breath. “I’m getting worked up.”

Ingrid can’t help but glance down again. She does it without thinking and sees him strain against his pants. The creeping heat that she had already been feeling feels warmer on her neck. When she looks back up, Sylvain’s eyes are open, watching her carefully, although he squirms a bit at the eye contact.

“Oh,” she says, swallowing hard. “Um.”

“Yeah, so -” he half shrugs. The movement jostles his shirt a bit and Ingrid’s eyes fall to where his shoulder becomes a little more exposed and something lower beneath her belly heats and burns; something powerful urges her to touch him. “It’s been a while so I'm going to need a minute.”

Ingrid’s bites her lip. The hand not holding herself over him, drifts down to his upper thigh and presses, nervously at first before laying flat. Her palm heats more at the touch.

She is sure they both stop breathing at the same time. Sylvain’s widened eyes reveal the darkest pupils she’s ever seen and she can see every part of his need, from his eyes all the way down. 

“Can I help?” she asks, not moving her hand any further in case he says no. Her fingers do, however, twitch against him. Even through the thin layer of cloth, Ingrid can feel the way they both burn.

Sylvain looks at her, locking into her eyes before glancing slowly down to her hand before meeting her eyes again. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Ingrid has never been so sure of anything else before. 

Sylvain nods very slowly and Ingrid shifts. Her hand travels, slowly, not because she’s delaying but because some part of her is nervous even with his permission. She does not know why. It will not be her writhing underneath him after all.

Perhaps it is because she knows he has been here before, been where she hasn’t. It’s unbalanced. Sylvain knows what someone else’s touch is like. Ingrid has never touched anyone before. A primal part of her that she’s only just unlocked mixes with her fierce sense of competition. Ingrid wants to be better. 

She traces her hand from his thighs upwards and Sylvain strains, looking almost pained when she glances up at him. Some part of her likes it. It is a strange feeling. She palms him through his pants and pulls away as he growls, loud and low. “Ingrid,”

Her name spurs her on. She’s careful as she tries again, not sure how much pressure to give, or whether she should wrap her hands around him. Her fingers trace the waistband of his pants.“Should we take it off?” 

Sylvain nods so enthusiastically that Ingrid almost laughs, were it not for the fact that her heart is in her throat and she can’t do anything except focus on the rough fabric of Sylvain’s pants, and the growing part of him that lays under.

She helps him out of his trousers and his underclothes, pulling them halfway down his hips. She’s almost a little afraid to look, fearful that this is another line that can’t be uncrossed. One more thing Ingrid will never unsee.

It is not as if she hasn’t seen him naked before, but this feels different. Ingrid has never touched him, and she has never seen him like this, nearly about to be undone by her hand on him. 

Sylvain is flat on his back. The blanket thrown off of him and now, she can see him in his entirety. Bare for her, in need of her, exposed and at attention.

He has never looked so beautiful.

Ingrid, kneeling beside him, reaches out and brushes her fingers tentatively against his shaft. Curious to the way he feels on her fingertips. 

“Ingrid.” Sylvain grunts again.

The sound of him emboldens her to wrap around his tip. Sylvain lets out a long low moan when she does. “I’m not going to -” he starts, grunting between, and trying not to buck into her. “I’m not going to last long.”

“That’s okay,” Ingrid says, staring up at him again. “but um, is this okay?” 

“Yeah,” he barely gets out, “yeah, but you can move-”

Sylvain cuts himself off with another groan, eyes shutting tight as Ingrid lets her hand slip. “Like this?” She moves experimentally.

“Yeah,” he grunts, “but do you mind if I…?”

Sylvain’s hand hovers around hers. 

“Go ahead.” She nods, “Teach me.”

She feels his hand cover hers over where she holds him. He guides her to the rhythm he likes and she follows, mesmerized by the way her hand feels as she strokes him, unused to movement and still worried she may do it wrong.

Ingrid has never felt like this before. She has never had a man in her hands and his hands around hers but the thrumming that she feels in her entire body, the buzzing centered in core, stretching outwards all the way where Sylvain teaches her to touch him, aids in the rhythm she eventually finds. 

He grunts her name over and over again at every pass and each time, Ingrid inhales sharply at the sound of it, at the sound of the way he rasps. 

She had never thought that she could find herself enjoying this too, not when it’s for Sylvain’s benefit.

Sylvain’s hand falls away with a whimper and he grasps onto the sheets with one hand as his other arm comes to lay his forearm over his eyes.

She finds that she does not like that. She does not like the way he hides from her but she loves the way he chants her name, over and over, like a prayer, alongside the Goddess’. 

Ingrid, still stroking him, shifts the rest of her body up in order to press her lips against his. He responds eagerly and sloppily. It makes her smile into him, into the poor way in which he kisses her, because it is nothing like how he normally is and she delights in the idea that she has made him this way.

Ingrid can almost feel Sylvain tighten his core to strain upwards towards her and she hears him whine when she breaks away. 

She leans back and lifts his arm away from his eyes with her free hand. 

“Sylvain,” she calls.

Sylvain’s eyes open but then he jerks forward and upward, face falling into her shoulder blade as his hands wrap around her, pulling her on top of him. The movement, abrupt and fast and strong, surprises her so much that she almost stumbles as she folds over him and completely loses her rhythm. 

“‘Close,” he says against the bare skin of her shoulder where her nightdress has skewed. He presses a kiss against her shoulder.

“Should I do something-?” she asks. The shift in positions has her almost laying on top of him, her arm at too awkward an angle to stroke him properly like she had been doing before.

“Faster ‘aybe,” he rasps against her shoulder.

Ingrid repositions as best she can and finds another speed. It doesn’t seem to matter because Sylvain trembles no matter what she does as he tries to muffle grunts against her. His kiss on her shoulder turns into a bite, perhaps a touch too hard, harder than Sylvain probably means to.

The fact that he doesn’t notice, the fact that Sylvain is unraveling because of her, simply by the touch of her, nearly undoes Ingrid herself. She had been so focused on Sylvain, on the way he bucks now against her hand, that she hadn’t noticed her own climbing desperate need for relief.

“Do that again,” Ingrid commands.

Sylvain either does not hear her or can’t because while his teeth stay on her skin, he does not bite down again. 

“Ingrid,” he gasps, letting her go and falling backward to sink further into his pillow, eyes shut, “ _please._ ”

“Look at me Sylvain.”

He groans, twitching underneath her, and she has to drag her free hand to his face, brushing the stray strands of his hair away. 

“ _Sylvain,_ ” she demands loudly, pausing, “ _open your eyes.”_

His eyes fly open to stare right into hers. Ingrid positions herself over him as best she can without straddling him and refuses to look away as she moves her hand again.

It’s this that she was waiting for. A Sylvain that comes undone, that finally breaks through his restraint and is too far past his limit, the one that nips her and curses and says her name with such heavy need and rasp and want, and _obeys_. 

The wild look on his face makes it easy to go on and on, past the moment when he finally comes with the loudest groan, too caught up in the rhythm to catch herself until after he spills hot into her hands.

It’s warmer than she thought it’d be. 

Sylvain’s chest rises and falls fast in her peripheral and she feels his hand come to hold hers as he unspools and extracts her fingers from him with a whine. Ingrid realizes now how tightly she’s been gripping him. 

It is longer than she anticipates before he finishes, riding out the last of his climax on his own as she watches him. She sits back up and looks completely at the way he’s spread out on the mattress. 

It’s messy. Sylvain is a mess, his trousers only most of the way down his hips, shirt completely open wide, cum on his own thighs and chest, his hair a mess of red on the white pillow. 

He is covered in sweat and undone and Ingrid cannot look away, even when her own body boils with need. 

Sylvain comes first though. Especially when he is helpless like this without her. When he can’t even stand to find a rag to clean himself with. When he can’t move other than to heave his chest up and down and twitch.

“I’ll be right back,” she says when he begins to relax, eyes closed but no longer shut so tightly. She leans towards his face and whispers near him, afraid to touch him. She likes him this way. She doesn’t want to break this spell he’s under or overstimulate him.

Or overstimulate herself. 

“I’m going to get something to clean you up.” 

He nods in acknowledgment. She wants to kiss him but refrains. It would be too much for her own benefit and not his. 

* * *

Later, as Ingrid dips the cloth rag into a small water basin and hands it to him, sitting up on the bed, Sylvain asks to return the favor.

Curiously, Ingrid flushes. “I uh, already took care of that,” she admits, avoiding his gaze.

“Oh,” he says, frowning despite trying to fight away the crawling disappointment, but the disappointment is brief because he’s distracted by the sudden image of Ingrid’s hands on herself. “Ah,”

Ingrid clears her throat, “yeah.” 

“Was it-” he swallows, “was it enough for you?”

Ingrid levels her gaze to him. She’s quiet for long enough that Sylvain starts to feel nervous but she does not look away. “What do you mean by that Sylvain?” She eventually asks.

It is not unusual for Ingrid to cut through his guise except when it comes to this intimacy between them, so Sylvain, no longer used to it, feels his mouth dry and calms the rapid beating of his heart to take a leap.

“I want to touch you,” he says bluntly, eyes flitting between Ingrid’s eyes and a spot in between her legs, “but only if you want me to.”

Ingrid sucks in a sharp breath through her teeth but she does not look surprised. She does not shy away, even while her skin turns a beautiful shade of pink. Then, she says something he never ever thought he would hear from her, not even after what she had done for him - done to him. 

“I do.”

* * *

Sylvain tells Ingrid that normally he’d prefer to be hovering over her and curses the fact that the pain in his leg makes the position too risky for either of them to be comfortable. She actually does laugh at the way he grumbles. It’s adorable, which is strange to think considering what he’s about to do.

_Goddess, what he’s about to do._

Ingrid’s body hasn’t stopped burning since he mentioned it. Any relief she had given herself earlier is rendered moot by the way Sylvain looks at her, reigniting every part of her body that asks for him.

It’s a lot of her body. 

It might be the whole of her body. 

A body Sylvain asks for, mixed in secretly with some not insignificant portions of her heart; it certainly beats faster and louder the closer he gets.

Sylvain adjusts himself next to her so that he’s lying on his side as carefully as he can without compromising his still healing leg. She eyes the splint on it, and the careful way he places it, wondering if this is a good idea, but the _thing_ within her, this burning desire and need that won’t go away allows her to brush past her concern.

It seems she can learn to be selfish sometimes too. And besides: Sylvain asked.

The uncertainty that comes with something new only fuels her strange nervous excitement but she will never admit that to Sylvain. She will likely never admit that to anyone. She is barely willing to admit that to herself.

“Should I just...lie down?” Ingrid asks somewhat nervously, propped up on her elbows just slightly. Her fingers play with the fabric of the bedspread as she waits for Sylvain’s answer.

Sylvain freezes, halting in his movement of beginning to reach over to her and frowns, eyebrows furrowed in concern. “Ingrid, are you sure this is okay?”

She looks to his hand, hovering just barely over her thigh, looks at him and thinks of the way he had looked earlier in her hand. “Yes,” she says, “I’m just - I haven’t done this before.”

The image of Sylvain does not go away when she blinks. She sees the ragged mess underneath her, calling and calling for her. She wonders if she will look the same. 

“Go slow?” she asks, then she adds, very quickly, “and kiss me first.”

Sylvain nods before shifting up a bit to lean into her and capture her lips. For a moment, she lets herself revel in the comfort of this familiarity, of the way she enjoys his mouth and the slow ease with which he welcomes her in. 

She could probably kiss him forever. Ingrid would have never thought that before, never dared to think that she could come to love so much the way his lips feel on hers. Her body naturally descends until her head rests comfortably onto the pillow. 

Sylvain breaks away, just a bit, to murmur against her. “Just tell me what you like okay?”

She kisses him instead and hopes that he takes it as an answer. Sylvain’s hands begin moving. He is slow and deliberate with this too, just like he had been with her mouth when they first started. The Sylvain that had been ragged, that had bucked underneath her, that had bitten so hard into her shoulder that the marks will likely stay for another day or two, is replaced by _this_ Sylvain. He is tender and careful and restrained.

But this is not the restraint she feels from him when they _only_ kissed. This is a slow sort of teasing. This doesn’t feel like he is holding himself back anymore; it feels more like he is tracing her, memorizing her shape with just his hands. He hums against her and Ingrid pulls him just that much closer. 

She will allow him to drink her in. Even if the teasing makes her want to gasp into him, even when his hands trail not on her skin but over the top of her dress and then lower still.

She groans as he palms her breast. 

“Do you like that?” He smirks into her, before pressing light kisses towards her ear. His voice is low and gravely as he muses, “I’ve always wondered if you’d like that.”

He’s a dirty liar. Ingrid refuses to believe otherwise, because otherwise would mean that he had thought of her, that he’s thought of touching her like this before.

And they were just friends before. She is not quite sure what they are now. 

“Sylvain,” she scolds as he nibbles on her ear, “shut up.”

“Not a fan of the talking?” he asks, sounding amused.

 _No_. 

_Wait-_

_Maybe?_

Ingrid doesn’t think she dislikes it entirely. She hasn’t had enough time to process whether or not she likes it. She’s still learning how to get used to it. All she knows now is that every time he whispers in her ear something sparks within her, but everything already _burns_ and she hasn’t learned to tell it apart yet.

Maybe she does like it. 

Ingrid doesn’t answer. Instead, she turns to kiss him roughly again, hoping that he’d be a little more reciprocal to it.

She likes the slow tender sweet Sylvain that kisses her in front of the fireplace. The one that stops when he’s out of breath from trying to walk to simply look at her but she also likes _this_ Sylvain. She likes this Sylvain that growls her name and bites her shoulder and tells her that he’s always wanted her, even when it may not be true.

Today, she will choose to believe him. Maybe one day she’ll actually ask him.

His hands drift down to her core, where he lays his palm flat against her skin. His hands are big, she’s noticed it before, but it’s different when his fingertips spread out onto her ribs, towards the underside of her breast. 

Another thought comes to mind. His big hand, his long fingers, inside of her.

“Sylvain,” she gasps, pulling away.

He nuzzles into her neck when her lips break away from his and continues to trail his mouth downward as best he can given how little he can actually move with the state of his leg.

“Hurry up,” she urges.

Sylvain grins into her skin. The hand on her belly lowers and finally slips underneath her nightgown. 

But it doesn’t go where he had promised. When Sylvain had said he wanted to touch her, she hadn’t realized that he had wanted to touch all of her. Not unlike how she longs to touch all of him.

She supposes it’s unfair. She has traced more of his skin than she has hers, in the bath, earlier in bed, and even before with the way her hands wander when they kiss. Sylvain, somehow a gentleman, has done very little in comparison. 

His hands tend to stay on his waist or in the areas above her collarbone. They have never touched her legs like this. They have never drawn circles on the inside of her thighs as he spreads her apart and slowly drags upwards.

 _“Sylvain.”_

“Sorry,” he mumbles, “but do I really have to stop?”

She bites her lip as she considers. It would be unfair to him to stop. Honestly, she enjoys the sensation. He's allowed a little bit of time with her but she _wants_ too. She aches for relief, for the feel of his hands on the most sensitive parts of her body. 

“No,” she decides, “but, ah- Sylvain.”

He pinches her lightly, cheekily, and she almost slaps him on the back of the head but then he is kissing her again, then he is tugging her dress up as best he can. “Take this off?”

It’s a request she can accommodate. 

She pushes Sylvain off of her a little and he watches her as she strips down to her underclothes. She has barely thrown her dress to the side before he attacks her lips again, pushing her back down onto the bed.

But then, he huffs, sounding frustrated. “This too,” he says, fingering the last piece of propriety she has left. 

She strips herself bare and just like that, she is naked under his gaze. 

“Gorgeous,” he says, licking his lip.

Ingrid tenses. She has never been seen like this by a man. She hadn’t thought much of it when she was pulling the pieces off of herself, too caught up in Sylvain’s request and lips but now, with just his eyes, she feels vulnerable. She shivers, only partly from the cold.

But only for a moment because Sylvain descends again, trailing soft nibbling kisses down her neck and lower, _finally lower_ , to her breast. 

His hand moves at the same time, brushing her clit while Ingrid moans and moans his name.

It’s too much all at once, to feel him in two places. To feel his tongue tease her nipple, to feel his thumb over her nerves and slowly moving in slow teasing circles.

She does not think she could possibly say his name more. She had no idea that she could enjoy the sight of the way he worships her. Ingrid has never felt so wanted, has never wanted so much and she wishes she could better keep her eyes open.

In this cold winter, with the snow falling and caging them in, Ingrid has never felt so warmed. Sylvain is hot against her and she can feel the way he burns through his own clothes and wonders if she should force them off.

Her hands find his hair instead and curl around his strands, if only to give her some outlet to the pleasure she feels everywhere. 

“Is this okay?” he says at one point, and Ingrid can only nod the slightest bit with the weakest little sound she’s ever heard from her own mouth. 

It’s maddening the way he touches her. That she could surrender herself to him like this. She never thought for a second that she would ever surrender herself to anyone like this. When it had been Sylvain underneath her, she was sure she would look nothing of the sort.

But Ingrid must look like that now, ragged and hungry. She certainly feels unraveled. 

“Can I-” Sylvain moves back up to her face and looks into her eyes, “put my finger-”

_“Yes.”_

Sylvain complies. 

It is hard not to gasp.

His finger slides in easily, although a touch too slowly. She had been so ready for him but even so her eyes fall shut and her head tilts back deep into the pillow. It is different when it’s not her own hand and it’s not simply because Sylvain's is bigger. It’s the fact that she has no idea what Sylvain is going to do. She has no control over him. That, in itself, is exhilarating. 

He is still so slow though. 

“Sylvain,” she scolds, “faster.”

It is funny how receptive he is to her commands when they are in bed. He usually never listens. 

“Another one,” she groans loudly, too loudly. She would be embarrassed any other time.

Sylvain doesn’t stop but he does gaze at her curiously.

“Finger,” she urges, “put another finger-”

When he does listen, he listens immediately.

It does not take long. Not with the way Sylvain looks at her, gazing with hungry eyes as he pulls back, as she arches into him alongside the rising rising of the something burning deep within her. Not with the way his hands move at such merciless pace.

Ingrid’s back arches towards him as she comes. She feels like every part of her is shaking, although she cannot be sure. She’s too distracted by the way Sylvain covers her moan with his lips, kissing her roughly as she rides out the wave and she cries into him, into his mouth as her hands claw at the back of his shirt, wanting so badly to rip it off. 

It takes a long moment for her to calm down in his arms. When she does, he lays her down gently, as if he hadn’t just been inside her, and kisses her sweetly as they calm.

He murmurs something into her ear. Something about beauty. She doesn’t hear the exact words. She just knows that she likes the way she feels next to him like this. Her body likes him too.

* * *

Their explorations of each other continue as winter presses on closer and closer towards spring. Sylvain’s leg has been healing well. He can now hobble around without her as long as he has the cane, although he still can’t get down the stairs on his own.

Ingrid knows he’s going a little stir crazy inside the room but she distracts him best she can. 

Exploring Sylvain comes with the added benefit of discovering herself. She had not anticipated this. She learns, through him, through the way they touch each other, what it is she likes. 

He is patient with her, even through his own needs, and Ingrid learns a great many things about Sylvain.

She learns that he listens to her and that he enjoys talking, although she notes that sometimes he can talk too much. Once, he tells her that she is a Goddess in his hands and Ingrid would have laughed were it not for the fact that she had been between breaths because his fingers had just curled inside her. 

She learns that Sylvain’s hands are dexterous and experienced and she tries not to wonder how that came to be. She learns that she quite enjoys hovering over him, which he cannot fight because of the way his leg still hurts. He loves to say her name. She has never heard her name in so many different ways before. She wonders if she will continue to hear more. She wonders if she is his favorite word.

A part of her hopes it is.

She does not tell him this. She hardly lets herself think it, except in those moments she is away from him, tending to other duties now that Ingrid is sure he will not collapse without her constantly there. She thinks that maybe if she makes him say it, if Sylvain says her name over and over, in an infinite amount of ways, there is no possible way for him to forget her when spring comes.

And when it does inevitably come, when his leg heals fully and he has to leave her, taking Blueberry back north to disappear with only the spare letters that make it through war and weather, Ingrid will at least have the memory of her name on his lips.

If that will be the only thing she can take with her, then so be it. It will have to be enough.

_Let it be enough._

* * *

Sylvain has not fully indulged in Ingrid the way he wants to although it does not seem to stop her from indulging in him. Just yesterday, she had learned to take him with her mouth. He wants very much to return the favor. He would love nothing more than to taste her. She has yet to let him.

But there is something else that holds him at bay. It is not only his leg. It’s a gnawing sense of something like guilt that wracks his body. It is not regret. He does not regret any of this time with her. In fact, he is sure that his moments with Ingrid, even the ones where she simply lays beside him to sleep or where they chat briefly about the war and the winter outside of them as the weather slowly warms, cuddled in front of the fire - they are likely the best moments of his life.

The feeling wells up inside him every time he thinks about the fact that he will have to leave her and what it may look like to anyone other than each other. Sylvain certainly does not want to return to Gautier. He does not want to return to a world where he remembers Dimitri is dead and where Felix only comes to him with bad news. 

They should probably stop. It would be easier if they stop now.If they do, it might ease the restlessness that comes from straddling a line too close to the perception that he might be using her. The one that makes him out to be a man escaping into her without much regard to the consequences of what will happen once the world turns again, without much regard to what it will do to her.

(He does not think about his heart here. About the fear of falling deeper into Ingrid’s naked embrace, into the quiet way she looks at him laid out on the pillowcase, hair every which way and smiles and trusts. Into the way she says his name and how it feels different when she is the one who says it, because Ingrid says it with the knowledge of the whole of the darkest parts of himself. She disarms him completely. In those moments, he is sure that there is nothing she could ask him that he would decline, and yet she never abuses him. Perhaps it is simply that.)

Ingrid does not ask him to stop.

It is not that they are doing a bad thing - Sylvain refuses to believe that it can be bad when both of them ask for it and both of them want it - but they are certainly doing something that nobility says they shouldn’t be doing. He is not blind to the consequences of all of this and how they are much worse for her than they are for him. Sylvain confirms it when he overhears an argument Ingrid has with her father when neither of them are aware of it.

_“Do you plan to marry him?” The Count asked. “It is not appropriate for you to spend so much time with him otherwise. Especially in the same room.”_

_“I do not.” Ingrid had said fiercely and without hesitation, “he is injured father. I am simply looking after him. He’s my friend.”_

_“People will talk.”_

_“I do not care what people will say.”_

_“You should. Especially if it turns other suitors away.”_

Sylvain had not listened to anymore than that. He did not want to. What he had wanted to do was ram his fist into the wall. 

The ugly part of him stirs. The hateful jealous part that says he wants no one else to see Ingrid the way she lets him see her. He tries to reassure himself that no one else will because he has never allowed anyone to see him like he is when he is with her. He can only hope that to be true with Ingrid.

But he doesn’t know.

(He lets himself linger on his brutal jealousy of another future nameless man rather than the fact Ingrid had so easily dismissed the notion of being with him because, if he thinks about her cutting words, he is not sure he can continue and he so badly wants to continue.)

Every day closer to spring, every day his leg heals more, is another day closer to the end of this pocket of paradise.

The world is creeping in again. Soon, Sylvain cannot pretend that his life is solely here in this hidden sleepy winter with her. Ingrid cannot either.

* * *

Ingrid finds that though she does not enjoy the way Sylvain tastes, she does enjoy the way he sounds and moves and bucks when she first runs her tongue against him. The grunt he makes whenever she first wraps her mouth around him is so satisfying. It strikes a deep chord in her center, the one that vibrates in her core and rings all the way throughout her body until she can no longer feel the way her knees press into the cold scratchy rug, bedside where Sylvain’s sitting.

She likes the way he listens when he is like this. When he is nothing but at her mercy. It is, truly, the only time he listens.

It takes her a while before she allows him to try his mouth on her. She is worried, although not entirely sure why, about the whole of the experience. It is not as if Sylvain hasn’t touched her. It is not as if he hasn’t seen her. It is not as if she doesn’t like the way his tongue feels everywhere else. It is partly because she is afraid of hurting him since there is no other comfortable way for him to be with the state of his leg other than for her to be over him. 

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she says biting her lip when Sylvain asks, trying to brush away the last remnants of embarrassment she still sometimes feels.

He is laying on his back, as he often is, when he shakes his head. “You won’t hurt me.” 

She is not sure about that.

But Ingrid does trust him, so she hovers hesitantly over his mouth. She is not sure of this position until his tongue runs over her and her hands slam deep into the headboard to catch herself, to stop her instinct of suffocating him, of squeezing her thighs and pressing the whole of her weight onto him.

She loves this. At this moment, she is so sure that she loves _him_.

Or at least, his tongue. Perhaps, mostly, his tongue.

Ingrid cannot even say his name. She can hardly even breathe. It is only hot puffs of air into the night as he tastes her, humming into her as she tries to keep her attention on the sound of her breaths and not the sticky sound produced by her body. It is the one thing about this she will likely never get used to. She is glad that he is too busy to talk, too muffled to say anything, because the thought of him saying something embarrassing would be too much for her, she thinks.

Every barrier Sylvain breaks, every hesitation he guides her through with kind eyes seeking permission, makes it impossible for her to imagine this with anyone else. There is no one else. There was never even supposed to be Sylvain. There was, perhaps, Glenn once but she had been so young, too young to think of anything nearing this.

And, honestly, it would have likely never been like this with him.

Ingrid’s knees are shaking and she feels her hips jolt on their own. Some things, she has learned, must be taught; other things happen on instinct. The way she moves on Sylvain is instinct. It can be nothing else when he can’t say anything she can hear, when she can’t keep her eyes open enough to do anything but move and try not to kill him, try not to let him kill her.

* * *

Sylvain frowns as he stands outside, squinting in the sunlight. Ingrid has run off somewhere for the morning. He had woken up to a cold empty bedside, something he is not at all used to anymore. 

It is starting to get too warm to justify her staying in the room with him to her father and his leg has become too well for her to look after.

Spring is nearly here.

He is still not fully healed. His leg still aches and he cannot put all of his weight on it quite yet. It is not strong enough to ride a horse on, but he can do a great many other things on his own now. 

Sylvain does not need Ingrid anymore, but he does want her. He wants her so badly that it hurts his chest to breathe when she isn’t crushed against it. He does not remember what a life without her is like any longer. He does not want to imagine it.

And it is not a want of just her body. They are not just two desperate lonely people sharing heat in the winter. Sylvain refuses to pretend they are. He has spent winters like that, and it is a false heat, a fire without body that withers after a fortnight. 

This flame has persisted past convenience and the body’s need, and there is too much history between them for this to mean nothing else.

But he had never thought to see her this way. He had never thought that the way he wants to touch her would blur so heavily with the way his heart now sees her. 

Something happened over time through their shared secret that has bound him completely to her.

Sylvain is sure of nothing else in this world other than the fact that he loves her.

It is no longer a love of her body or a love born from her friendship. It is simply a love of Ingrid. He loves her.

He has not told her. Because the winter is already passing and he cannot be sure that she loves him the same. She has made no mention of her feelings in all of this, and he has been careful to keep his own at bay as well.

Sylvain knows that Ingrid cares for him. He has always known this. He also knows that she enjoys the way he touches her and kisses her and everything else with her. He just doesn’t know if she is like him, if her lines have been blurred too. 

Ingrid is not like everyone else he has been with. With all the others, Sylvain had chosen defiance. He takes and takes, oftentimes roughly, mindful almost entirely of his own pleasure once they agree to it, but it never lasts. It never ever lasts. He never feels anything afterward, other than the emptiness that comes with exhaustion.

It is one of the reasons why he abandons his partners so easily. After all, it is not as if they want him. They want some idea of him that he takes great vindictive joy in revealing that he has no intention of living up to. 

It is awful, he knows. Sometimes he wants to be better, most of the time, in the dark twisted part of his heart, all he is strong enough to do is poorly rebel from within the cage by banging on its walls.

The easiest way had been to discard the worth of his body and give into the simple pleasure of release. He did not need his body to mean more. Sylvain is careful to find partners who feel the same, who use their bodies for gain.

It’s just sex.

Until Ingrid, it had only been just sex.

Sylvain had never known that it could be anything more than that. He did not subscribe to the overly romantic notion of it but he cannot deny that it is not just his body that calls to her afterward. It is his heart asking his hands to tuck her underneath his chin where she curls against him to sleep. It is the way Ingrid smiles at him, satisfied, that makes him want to do it again. 

It is the simple joy of kissing her sweetly, even when nothing else comes from it. It is the ache in his chest whenever she leaves the room and the brief startling fear that she won’t come back.

Ingrid sees through him in all of his broken tragic nakedness. She traces him carefully with the pads of her cracked fingers through all the bruises and scars and knows how he hurts. She kisses old wounds and knows their source. Ingrid sees him, no longer pretty, muscle gone and atrophied, and does not balk. Somehow, she sees him and thinks him still beautiful even when she knows the deep twistedness of his ugliness.

Ingrid is not like him. She is broken too, in some old ways that they do not talk about, but she is far from ugly. She hides a lot of herself, to be sure, and is not one to give herself so freely. Yet, somehow, she has trusted Sylvain, chosen Sylvain, and allowed him this.

It is only fair then, for Sylvain to surrender his body to her. 

_It’s yours._

He has already taken a lot of things from her, her friendship, her forgiveness, and a great many other things he does not know how to articulate but now he has something to give to her. Finally, he has something to give to her. 

His body is hers, so long as she still wants it. His place is as her friend, if that’s all she asks of his heart. 

He cannot ask for hers. It would be too selfish.

Warm hands snake onto his forearm, startling him. When he peers over, he sees Ingrid’s smiling face gazing up at him. 

“Morning,” he breathes, and for the first time, he feels spring and does not dread it. Ingrid calms him, just with the simple act of her presence. Somewhere nearby, something chirps. Sylvain feels like a schoolboy, open in the courtyard in daylight, Ingrid beside him.

He knows it will not last. He knows that spring still comes with departure but Ingrid leans up and kisses him sweetly. She kisses him as if he’d stay. 

“Morning,” she greets on his lips.

For a moment in the melting snow, the grand old house behind them, Sylvain can pretend that he will still be here when the grass is green. 

He smiles even when she pulls back and leans her head against his arm. “Where did you go?” He asks.

“Had to pick a few things up.” Ingrid’s hands drift downward into his, where their fingers find their favorite places tangled in each other. “You seem well.”

“Better now with you.” 

She laughs. Sylvain commits this moment to memory. For all the ways she says his name, for all the things they do in that bedroom, it is moments like this that make him wonder. It is moments like this he wants her to keep. 

_I’m yours._

* * *

Sylvain leans back against her in the water of the tub they share. He is well enough to bathe himself by now that it is impossible for Ingrid to pretend to be here for any other reason than the fact that she wants to be, so she doesn’t bother.

Any space between them hardly seems to mean anything anymore. It is cool enough for them to pretend that it is winter still. They will stretch it out as long as they can.

Afterward, perhaps they will do this no longer. Afterward, as the trees grow green, perhaps they will never see each other again.

There are no guarantees in war. 

But today- later tonight, Ingrid can have him and she plans to have all of him. She has no illusions about the way he will soon leave her. She does not pretend this to be anything more than it is, a stolen moment between them stretched on for weeks and weeks and weeks, so she will savor it all.

She does not want him to leave. She can think of little else she wants less. Ingrid wants Sylvain to stay with her forever. A childish wish.

But she cannot ask him to. Sylvain will do a great many things for her, she has learned, but only this winter. Afterward, he will return to playfully defying her. If they see each other again, they will likely return to their normalcy. He will chase others. She will watch him chase them. She will scold him and save him and love him. 

And this winter will stay a secret between them. Sylvain has given her no indication otherwise.

This thing has been easy with Sylvain. She can think of no one else she could do this with and have it be so simple. He does not lie to her and she does not lie to him. Perhaps, she holds a few things from him, but not much. Only the small parts of her heart that wishes for a world where they could perhaps have more. Ingrid holds those because he deserves better than this secret winter.

Her father had asked her if she would marry Sylvain. If she had intended to pursue him. She did not lie when she said that she did not. Ingrid will not do that to Sylvain. She will not trap him in a situation she knows he would hate.

They do not use each other in this way. They offer other parts of each other to each other but they do not use each other. Sylvain deserves better. Ingrid is learning that she does too, even when the circumstances don’t always allow for it, but Sylvain is good at reminding her. He is good to her. She can indulge in a little good, even when it’s not forever. Especially when it’s not forever.

Sylvain’s back is warm against her chest. He sinks deeper into her and turns to kiss the side of her neck but he does not ask for more than that. He is happy in the hot water. She can tell because he hums against her and because the smile on his face, open and honest, tells her so. 

It makes her heart flutter. He makes her flutter. He makes that warmth in her chest spread down to her toes, felt even above the way the hot water roams her skin. She likes the way he fits in her, even when he is larger than her. Ingrid does not remember how she began to join him in the bath but it felt so natural a progression that she does not question it.

She questions very little the way their bodies are drawn to each other. She only questions the way her heart throbs when she thinks of sunlight in clear blue warm skies. 

* * *

Sylvain’s leg is well enough now that there is no reason for Ingrid to hover over him other than the fact that she quite clearly enjoys it. He is sure that Ingrid must know the way he can see through her excuse. She cites that she is mostly being careful because he is not all the way healed and were they to get too excited, she would not want to delay him any further in his recovery. She does not want to hurt him.

He bites his tongue, bites the way he almost asks her to, because any excuse to stay longer is something he is desperate for.

But Ingrid would never allow him this. She is still so _Ingrid_. She still stays steadfast to the ideals kept in her heart even when she is on top of him like this, pressing hands down on his shoulder, naked above him. Perhaps he is her only compromise; more likely, it is this winter that is the compromise. He does not ask.

What he does ask is this: 

“Ingrid, are you sure?” 

It is not that he does not want it but he has to be sure she does. Ingrid hesitates through very few things in her life, even when it comes to her body. He will hesitate for her if she is too proud to do so herself. 

“Yes,” she tells him. She sits on his chest where he can feel every part of the way her body asks for it, “are you?”

Sylvain has been ready for this for a very long time, longer than she probably suspects. He wonders, had it not been for his leg, would they have waited so long. He wonders if it is because of the leg that they get a chance at all. 

His hands trace her thighs and upwards on her naked body and he smiles at the way she responds. “It might be better if we flip. It’ll be easier at first.”

Ingrid glances down, looks at his leg, free from the splint but still tender, and then back up at his face. Her eyes are worried, although he can still see her eagerness, if not in her eyes, then in the way she shifts on him. “You’re still hurt,” she tells him. “I’ll be fine.”

He refrains from saying that any pleasure from her would be worth the pain. He refrains from saying that even from this position, there is potential to overexert. He does not want her to retract entirely only because of him. If Ingrid wants this as much as he does, he will willingly give it to her. 

Sylvain leans up; he reaches a hand around her neck to pull her towards him, to pull her down. He will ease her into it, and not just because he enjoys her tongue. 

Ingrid comes down with him easily. She does not fight him. She only deepens the kiss as Sylvain runs his hands into her hair. He loves to make it a mess. It is not difficult to do so.

Ingrid’s chest is against his own, were she not so distracted by his lips and his hands, she would notice how fast his heart beats.

Eventually, when she determines herself ready, Ingrid sits back up and positions herself above him. Sylvain asks, once again. 

“Are you sure?” 

She does not answer him, she lowers herself instead and Sylvain’s head knocks back. It takes a lot to keep his eyes open, to watch her react to him just barely inside of her.

His pleasure does not supersede his worry for her though. He had warned her earlier that it may hurt but Ingrid does not seem to care, even as she winces. 

“Ingrid, how are-”

She presses the whole of her weight onto him suddenly, too suddenly, and Sylvain gasps out the same time she collapses onto him. He barely catches her low groan, too distracted by how he feels inside of her, but he does and it alarms him. This is not the same pleasurable sound that Sylvain has come to know from her. It is something else, something closer to pain. 

“Ingrid,” he breathes, barely, “are you-”

Ingrid folds deeper into his chest, burrowing her face into his neck. Her hands scratch around his shoulders, digging deep. “Just a second,” she tells him weakly.

He nods and waits, fighting a body that so badly wants to move. Right now, he is sure he is in paradise, and he hates that Ingrid hurts for it. 

He lets her rest against him. His hands come up to try to soothe her. He starts by running his hand through her hair, then down her back and back up, marking patterns on her skin with his fingertips.

Eventually, Ingrid nods into him with a shuddering breath. “I think I can move now.” She winces as she lifts her chest off of him, laying her palms flat on his chest where her warmth spreads through to his heart.

“Do you want me to?” he offers. Sylvain’s hands come up to trace alongside her sides. He delights in the way she shivers at his touch.

Ingrid shakes her head. “Might be better if I try to set the pace. Do you mind?”

He does not mind. He minds very little when it comes to Ingrid. In truth, in all the times before her, Sylvain has always been a selfish lover. There had been no point to be anything but when he had intended to scurry off the next morning. He had cared very little for who was at his bedside. He knows that it is horrible. He knows that he is not anywhere close to good.

But he wants to be good to Ingrid. Even before he had realized he loved her, even when this whole thing started, whatever it was back then - some half-hearted confused hazy feelings of friendship mixed in with bodily need- even then Sylvain had wanted to be good to her.

He is not good with many other people. He has not always been good to her. The least he can do is be good to her body, if he cannot be with her friendship.

He takes so much from her. At this point, Sylvain is sure that he may have taken nearly everything, but Ingrid has also given this freely. He will give back as much as he can. He does not know what else he can offer her other than this, especially right now. It is why he has never given her anything worthy before. 

As with everything else they have done before, Ingrid takes some time to find what she likes but it is not so difficult anymore. Ingrid knows herself better now, she knows him better now, their bodies know each other, even when he keeps his heart from her.

But he would give her that too if she asked. He is just sure that she won’t. 

“Ingrid,” he growls. He knows she likes it when he says her name. “Ingrid.”

Ingrid makes many different beautiful noises but none of them are words. She folds on him again, and, for a moment he is afraid he’s hurt her again but she simply kisses him, caging him in as they both begin to move.

It is not hard to find what works between them. No one knows his body like she does. He has given no one this much time. He is sure that there is no one he could possibly give the time to other than Ingrid in this moment.

He almost tells her. It is on his lips.

But instead, he continues to sing her name. Eventually, she finds a way to sing his. 

* * *

It is warm in spring. Sylvain does not need the cane anymore. He hasn’t needed it in a few days. He is long overdue to leave. The only way he managed to extend his stay is because of Ingrid’s worry.

They do not spend the last few days hidden in the bedroom. Instead, she makes him spar with him. He will be going back north alone after all and the last time he had been alone, she had found him dying in the snow.

The nights are still theirs but only the nights. Ingrid kisses him less the second she hands him his relic. It is like the spell has been broken.

Sylvain is already aching from it. The thought of riding away from her, the thought of the time without her, it aches more than his muscles do after his first spar in months.

His body already misses her. He feels like in the last few months they have been together, they have been joined in something sacred and there is no way for him to remember what it is like without her warmth. He cannot go another two years without seeing her. He cannot only hold onto letters that come sparsely or are lost to battle and time.

Sylvain cannot go back to not loving her. Now that he knows, he cannot unknow or unfeel the love he has for her. He cannot bear to only have the ghost of her on his chest. 

But he will have to. Now that his sense of time has returned, and ticking slowly on with the warm weather, through the throes of war, this is how things must go.

Ingrid has not returned to her own room properly, but she has begun to move her things out of the guestroom. Sylvain didn’t realize how much she’d brought with her into his room. Books, mostly, for when they read in front of the fireplace. Paper and pens to write letters with once they were sure that the winter wouldn’t lose them. Most of Ingrid’s wardrobe, when she had grown tired of running back and forth to change, and other little things to keep them occupied when they were not solely occupied with each other.

These have been slowly disappearing from the room. If she notices it bothers him, she has done nothing to slow it. Every missing piece feels like another bit of his heart taken from him. 

Sylvain knows that when he leaves Galatea, he will be leaving his heart behind. It will stay, forever, in that big empty guest room in this near-empty house, locked behind that old wooden door. 

He would leave it with her but she won’t take it. She will run off to the border as soon as she can, Luin with her as she defends her homeland. He will try not to worry and fail. 

And then they can delay it no more. Then the day comes.

* * *

Her father is behind her, on the first step that leads into the house. This is as far as the man will go. The Count had spent as little time as possible with the Heir of Gautier in his stay, something that Ingrid had arranged by design, but he has still benefited from the supplies the Margrave had sent into Galatea to survive the harsh winter they just had, so her father has said very little of his daughter nursing Sylvain outside of little side remarks and that one confrontation in the hallway.

He has not said anything more to her about Sylvain and marriage. Ingrid does not know what her father knows about the nature of her relationship with Sylvain, but he isn’t a stupid man. There is only one bed in that room after all, and they both know she has not been staying in her own. Ingrid has not exactly hidden it. 

He must disapprove, which is why he pretends not to know. It is also why he does not ask.

She watches Sylvain bid her father a very polite goodbye and promise to thank him more thoroughly for the hospitality. Ingrid will be the one walking Sylvain to the road.

She feels sick from the thought.

Today Sylvain leaves her. She has done her best to keep her distance when she can so that it might hurt less. In the sunlight, when she forced him to wield a weapon again, to train and remember what it is like to fight, one might even be able to mistake them for an old Academy mirage.

Any yielding that she is willing to give him only occurs in the darkness of that bedroom down the hall from hers, and the nights are shorter now that spring is here. 

She had kissed Sylvain just once this morning, very quickly. It will likely have been their last, and it was nothing. It was a peck on the lips on two sides of the door frame of a bedroom that will forever be theirs after straightening out his collar before she commanded him to don his armor on his own. 

Then she had gone to the stable to cry. Ingrid refuses to let anyone see her in that state, least of all her father. 

Her tears will do no good for anyone.

It could not be a more perfect day. The sun is high and the sky is cloudless. It is not too hot but still warm enough to say that they are well and truly in spring. Sylvain is impossibly handsome in his armor, his hair a brilliant beautiful healthy shade of red against the morning light, contrasting heavily with the neutral expression on his face. 

She is confident that he has fully recovered. There is no excuse for Ingrid to use anymore to keep him, and truly, honestly, she is eager to ride out too. She will do so as soon as there is need for her. 

But she will miss him and Sylvain takes with him, when he leaves, a part of herself she swore she would never give away again.

Her heart is his. She does not tell him so but it is. There is nothing more she can do for him except slip it secretly into his pocket and hope blindly that he never notices.

* * *

They are silent on their walk away from the Count and towards the path. There is only the crunching of the boots on dirt underneath them and Blueberry’s hooves clopping along beside them. 

Sylvain does not know what to say. 

He knows what he wants to say but his words are caught, stuck deep in his throat. His mind whirls with spinning thoughts, almost all of them questions.

Did they already have their last kiss? Did he miss his chance to savor it? How had it happened without him realizing? 

He had thought they’d have at least one more moment. 

If he had known that they wouldn’t, he would have -

What exactly? 

Still leave her.

They reach the end of the property. Sylvain finally glances over at Ingrid who is still avoiding his eyes. She stands underneath a large archway of an open old black gate. She does not walk forward onto the path, where he is expected to go.

“Ingrid-” he says.

“Don’t-” Her voice is watery. For a moment, his heart stops, and his hope soars. For a moment, he thinks she will ask him to stay. “It’ll just make this harder.”

He does not know how he still stands when she shatters him like so, when the heart he thought he’d left behind breaks. “Oh.” He clears his throat. “Okay.”

Ingrid nods, although he does not know why. Sylvain tips his head back into the sky. 

There are no answers in that wide-open sky, only an expanse of blue.

“But,” Ingrid continues beside him, surprising him, “maybe a hug-”

Sylvain crushes her to him, pressing her into him as deep as he can. He wants to feel her body through every hard section of metal in his armor but the best he can get is a whiff of her hair. He buries himself into her, breathing as much of her in as she allows. He does not care that her father’s eyes are on them. He does not care because if he cannot kiss her, if she won’t let him, if he’s already had his last, he will at least let himself have this.

_I love you._

Her hands creep around his back. He wishes he could feel her fingers. He wishes she would just raise them up a little bit so that she can curl them into his hair like she has done hundreds of times before. He wills her to.

Ingrid does not. 

“Sylvain,” she says, and it is unfair that she gets to say his name when she won’t let him say hers, “you have to go.”

“Okay,” he mumbles into her neck, the closest his lips will get to hers again, “okay.”

He pulls away and steps back. Ingrid’s eyes reflect his own, on the verge of crying, and using all the strength they have left to hold it in.

He does not want his last image of her to be blurred by his tears. He wants to see her as she is. Beautiful, radiant, kind, strong, so very strong, stronger than he could ever be.

Ingrid looks away first. Her eyes move to steady onto Blueberry and Sylvain breathes shakily into his chest at her signal. It’s time, she says without a word.

He turns his back to her, towards Blueberry. It’s time and yet his hands fiddle with the bags, the straps, anything to delay it just a moment longer. 

“Sylvain,” she says when he still doesn’t move.

“I know,” he tells her, ”just-”

She lets him fall silent and take a moment. He is grateful she does not leave to walk back to the house, even though he expects her to. 

And then his hands land on Blueberry’s saddle. Ingrid’s intake is sharp.

This is it.

 _I love you_.

It is something he was never supposed to say. It is something he isn’t even supposed to think. It is certainly something he’d never thought he’d feel. They were never going to last into the new season. They were never even supposed to have winter.

Sylvain’s heart beats loudly into his ears. He is leaving Ingrid -

_Why is he leaving Ingrid?_

Something in his chest burns. It burns through all of his armor out bright into the spring day. He whips around to face her, fierce suddenly, ugly suddenly. “Will you really not marry me?”

Ingrid’s head snaps up. The tears that were threatening to fall a moment ago disappear, likely from surprise. “What?” she whispers.

“You won’t even consider me?” Sylvain doesn’t know what he’s saying. It comes out too fast. All of it in a messy heap of last-second desperation as he takes a forward step towards Ingrid. 

The heat in Ingrid’s eyes spills out into her words, “Why would you even ask that? Why would you ask that _now_?”

“When else would I ask it?” He counters, “there’s no more time.”

Ingrid stares him down. Her hands fly to her hips and he is reminded of all the fierceness in her that he loves. “No,” she snaps at him darkly. “I won’t consider it.”

Sylvain flinches and takes a full step back. His heart falls to the floor. His stomach turns and he thinks he’s going to throw up. “Oh,” he says. Then, very quietly, “why not?”

He has rarely seen her so sad. It’s guarded by her fury: her body is shaking slightly and she has her fist in a grip so tight her fingernails might cut skin. “You don’t want to get married Sylvain,” she says sadly, “you’ve told me so yourself.”

His mouth parts, just slightly, as his chest burns again but any righteousness is replaced by a different form of warmth. “Is that the only reason?”

“Sylvain-”

“Is that the only reason you won’t consider me?” He presses, “because you think I don’t want to marry you?”

“Don’t do this,” Ingrid pleads desperately, “Sylvain, please don’t do this.”

He takes a step forward again. Ingrid does not step back. “Do what?” 

Ingrid bites down hard on her lip. He watches her gaze drop to the floor. He almost doesn’t hear her words. “Make me hope.”

She sounds so small. 

His breath rushes out of his lungs. His heartbeat drums every part of his body. He can feel the heat of the day through the thick plates of his armor, stirring deep in his chest. He can feel her words in him, just as sure as he could feel every single part of her body that he’s touched with his own hands. 

He bites down on the inside of his own cheek, hard, so as to ground himself enough to say the words immediately. They cannot wait, and they rush out of his mouth:

“I love you.” Then, he clears and steadies himself so he can say it clearly, so he can say it in a way she might believe. “Ingrid, I love you.” 

Ingrid does not move. Her gaze stays on the floor. Sylvain takes another step forward. He is close enough that their shoes nearly touch. 

“Did you hear me?” he says again, “Ingrid, I-”

Ingrid yanks him to her, hands on the hard collars of his armor. He has only a fraction of a moment to meet the fierceness in her eyes before she kisses him breathless.

One of Sylvain’s hands gingerly cups the side of Ingrid’s face where he brushes some of the stray tears away. Of all the kisses they’ve shared, none feel better than this kiss in broad daylight. They have been hidden for a season; this is the first rush of air into his lungs. It is like looking forward to spring for the first time after a cold long winter. It is the best moment of his life. 

It is a first kiss instead of a last.

When they pull away, they do not pull far. They stay together. Ingrid steadies her hands behind his neck, his finds her waist, their foreheads gently touch. Sylvain waits, letting their breaths mingle as he wonders what happens now.

One of Ingrid’s hands trail and lays against the metal plate on his chest, right above his collarbone where he knows she likes to rest. Her head dips down a bit as she stares at the back of her hand, a small frown fixed on her face.

“I love you too,” Ingrid confesses quietly.

Sylvain’s heart soars, as does the rest of his body but he is mindful of her sad expression and the way her fingers now drum lightly on his chest. 

She blinks back up at him, eyes still watery. “But you still have to go.”

He frowns deeply, even through the warring triumph of Ingrid’s three words in his heart. Somehow, Sylvain is not surprised by this. He smiles weakly through his next words. “Is that a no to my proposal then?”

Ingrid breathes a shuddering half-laugh, “ _was_ that a proposal?”

“It can be.”

“It’s a terrible one,” she says with a snort of air, “but it’s not a no.”

“Not a yes either is it?”

She shakes her head with a smile. “No,” she tells him, “not yet.”

He supposes he should have expected that. “Okay,” he says kissing the top of her head. He turns his head slightly, catching Count Galatea’s glare. “Your father looks like he’s going to kill me.”

Ingrid sighs and rests her cheek into his chest, not at all minding the cool plates against her skin. Her tone is almost teasing when she says, “that’s one of the reasons why you have to go.”

“I have more reasons for staying, or- ” Sylvain shrugs, “-one really good reason.”

“I want you to,” Ingrid admits, “I really really do Sylvain.”

“How long would you like me to stay?”

Although he cannot see it, he knows that Ingrid’s face twists into a frown. “Are you really going to make me answer?”

“I want to hear it Ingrid.” It’s selfish to ask, Sylvain knows, but he cannot help it. “Can you? Answer, I mean.”

“Forever,” she says without needing to think. “I think I want you to stay forever.”

“I would.” He runs his hand along her back. “For you, I would.”

“For me, you’ll go,” she says pulling away but allowing for a looser embrace. “We have so many things to sort out.”

He hates that she’s so right. “Including each other yeah?”

“Including each other,” she affirms with a nod, “which will be sorted.”

“I’ll see you as soon as I’m able.” He promises, although as soon as he says it, Sylvain’s mind whirls with an assortment of warfront thoughts and struggles to find places for Ingrid to fit. Ingrid is right, he has to return. He has delayed his responsibilities for too long, large looming responsibilities that he inherited, not only from his father but from Dimitri’s demise. Responsibilities with long-lasting consequences. 

The great list of things to do unrolls in his head. Gautier is one of the strongest houses left loyal to the crown. Sylvain must go back to bolster the faith in their promises and prove the might of his lineage. He must meet with Felix, both to prove that he is okay but also to arrange patrols alongside their shared borders. He must reach out to the very few houses that have yet to fully declare allegiances and convince them to see the truth. He must find ways to strengthen defenses by Sreng without feeding the tension there, in case they use the opportunity to invade, and alongside it all, he now must inform his father of a new negotiation with Galatea. 

Sylvain breathes, trying to recenter himself. Ingrid’s gentle touch helps. 

“I’ll come back,” he reassures, mostly to himself. He is determined to come back.

“Or I’ll go to you,” she offers as if she doesn’t have her own list of duties to tend to, as if she isn’t the sole crest wielder of Galatea. “We’ve spent enough time here.”

“Okay,” he beams, “don’t make me wait too long.”

Ingrid leans up and kisses him sweetly, briefly. “I won’t.” 

Ingrid doesn’t break her promises. 

Sylvain’s heart is still heavy but at least it’s not broken anymore. 

“Okay,” he says, steeling himself, “I’m going.” 

Ingrid nods. He presses one last kiss to her temple before stepping away from her but right before he turns, he feels her hand grab onto his. 

“No one else Sylvain,” she commands sharply, eyes fierce and blazing, “as long as we’re both still here. No one else.” 

“No one else,” he promises, squeezing her hand, “I love you.”

Ingrid’s expression softens, “I love you too.”

She lets him go. Sylvain hoists himself up on Blueberry and stares down the green tree-lined path stretching and curling out into the sunlit horizon north towards Gautier. He pauses on the saddle, staring down at the last image of Ingrid he’ll have for a while and tries to commit her to memory. 

Ingrid is beautiful and fierce and in love with him. That is enough for now.

Sylvain kicks off and hurdles into spring, ready to leave winter behind.


End file.
